Use of informants in Muslim enclaves sparks concern

DETROIT — He was a 21-year-old man working long hours at his dad's pizzeria in Detroit, desperate for love after the sudden breakup with a woman he wanted to marry.

"Being lonely hurts," Khalil Abu-Rayyan texted in December.

By early February, the Dearborn Heights man wanted to kill himself.

"Just tie a rope on the ceiling fan, then put a chair, and I tie my neck around the rope, and then I take the chair," Abu-Rayyan told a woman on the phone on Feb. 2, according to a FBI recording of the call. "And only like a minute or two, it'd be over."

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Abu-Rayyan thought he was speaking to a 19-year-old Iraqi-American Muslim woman named Jannah.

She actually was an undercover FBI employee, the second FBI undercover employee who entered his life.  Her response to Abu-Rayyan that night seemed to suggest to him that suicide for a larger religious cause was legitimate.

“When it’s for the sake of Allah, when it’s jihad, or when it’s based on our aqidah (Islamic creed) or for a cause, that's the only time Allah ... allows it but not to put your life to waste and just hang yourself like you say you want to do," the FBI employee posing as 'Jannah' said over the phone. 

Abu-Rayyan was arrested two days after the Feb. 2 phone call. A federal indictment unsealed the same day said Abu-Rayyan had talked of "committing acts of terror and martydom — including brutal acts against police officers, churchgoers and others — on behalf of" the Islamic State.

The actions of the undercover FBI employee are part of what civil-rights advocates and Muslim-American leaders say is a pattern of abuse by the U.S. government in using informants or undercover FBI employees to target Muslim-Americans. In recent years, the FBI has used informants in undercover investigations with greater frequency, according to advocates and experts.

U.S. officials, including the head of the FBI in Detroit, Special Agent in Charge David Gelios, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch strongly defend the use of informants, saying they only target people who already have expressed intentions to commit criminal behavior.

Using informants is "a legitimate tool in combating terrorism," Gelios said.

In metro Detroit, two other cases involving undercover FBI agents or informants have played out in courtrooms this year: a Dearborn, Mich., man, Mohammad Hamdan, whom prosecutors said was going to fight for Hezbollah, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist group, and a Detroit man, Sebastian Gregerson, 29, whom the FBI seeks to link to terrorists and who was charged with possessing and receiving explosives.

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But none of the men has been charged with any terrorism crimes, drawing criticism from civil-rights advocates who say that even after using informants who seek to push suspects to terrorism, the U.S. government is unable to bring terror charges.

Detroit-area Muslim leaders who head mosques say they have nothing to hide but are concerned about the FBI going after young men who might be mentally unstable or have emotional problems who can be manipulated.

In addition, critics accuse the FBI of pressuring Muslims in the U.S. to become informants and spy on their own communities. In April, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit against the FBI and other federal agencies, saying that Muslim-Americans from Michigan and other states were being pressured to become informants.

In one case, a 24-year-old Yemeni-American from Dearborn, Osama Ahmed, said he was stopped and interrogated at the airport after flying back from Yemen when he was 18 and FBI agents later pressured him to become an informant to get off a no-fly list.

On behalf of Muslim immigrant Mohamed Al Seraji, the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America filed a similar lawsuit in Texas. Al Seraji said he was asked to spy on local Muslims in exchange for getting permission to work in the U.S.

Across the USA, undercover agents or informants are being used in terrorism investigations that are leading to convictions. In May, three Somali-Americans in Minnesota were found guilty of trying to join the Islamic State, the result of a two-year investigation involving a paid informant, who secretly recorded them.

Of 104 individuals charged with Islamic State-related offenses in the U.S. since March 2014, 58% of their cases involve informants or undercover agents, said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber & Homeland Security.

"The FBI is responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than any other organization," said author and journalist Trevor Aaronson, whose book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror details the agency's use of informants. According to Aaronson, the FBI now has "more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities."

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Abu-Rayyan's defense attorney, Todd Shanker, said his client was harmless, an emotionally vulnerable young man manipulated by two undercover FBI employees.

"The government clearly exploited Rayyan and blatantly attempted to steer him toward terrorism as an acceptable form of suicide before God," Shanker said.

"This misuse of informants not only damages relationships with Muslim-American communities, it erodes the trust that is necessary if Muslim citizens are going to come forward with tips about individuals who really do pose a substantial danger," Shanker said. "Sting operations like the one used in this case breed fear and distrust without making us any safer."

The use of informants comes as the United States is facing the growing threat of radicals who may be inspired by the Islamic State and other militant groups to carry out terrorist attacks inside the U.S. From San Bernardino, Calif., to Orlando to New York City this month, terrorist attacks this year have prompted calls for the FBI to step up its investigations.

"When we conduct undercover operations, ... we are not targeting someone who has shown no propensity to commit crimes," Gelios told the Free Press. "But when we are investigating individuals who have expressed a desire to commit a violent act or to commit an act of terrorism, ... we view the more intrusive investigative methods —  like a sting or an undercover operation — as a legitimate tool in combating terrorism."

Lynch, speaking at a news conference in August in Detroit, agreed, saying that while the Justice Department is aware of concerns, federal law enforcement is "dealing only with individuals who are predisposed toward some sort of criminal activity regardless of the community that they may be operating in."

"In general it's a technique that's used when there's already some sort of evidence of inappropriate activity ongoing," Lynch said. "There are protocols for that."

While informants are misused in some cases, Hughes, a George Washington University terrorism expert who previously worked for the federal National Counterterrorism Center, said they are needed to assess threats.

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"You're dealing with a bunch of individuals who are closed off from society to begin with," Hughes said. "So you're trying to get some inside view, a window into their thinking, to see if they will commit a violent act."

The FBI uses informants in a wide range of cases "to get a sense of what the scene looks like," he said.

Some Muslims complain that the use of informants targeting Muslim-Americans has spiked while federal law enforcement ignores potentially violent groups such as white supremacists.

"The FBI regularly targets Muslim-Americans who have no connection to terrorism," said Arjun Singh Sethi, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt University Law School. "The use of informants absent any evidence of wrongdoing has led to dangerous overreach and chilled the constitutional rights of Muslim-Americans.

"No one should be targeted on the basis of their faith, and yet Muslim-Americans often are," he said.

But Gelios says the FBI is "color blind as to what group" it targets.

"We're not allowed to target groups by their culture or ethnicity, or race or religion," Gelios said. "We have a priority here in the Detroit office of the FBI to look at all forms of extremism, be it animal-rights extremism, or white-supremacist extremism, or militia extremism, or abortion-rights extremism, to include radical extremism, today associated with various international groups ... such as ISIL."

"Despite often the allegations of entrapment, ... there are either no or very few instances where a court, when something went to trial, has ever reversed or found someone not guilty on the basis of entrapment," Gelios said.

One pattern that concerns some activists is that young men with emotional problems are often targeted.

Befriended by informant

Hamdan was depressed.

The 21-year-old Dearborn man had broken up with a longtime girlfriend and felt lost. Hamdan didn't have a college degree and was frustrated with the odd jobs he did in construction, court testimony showed.

He talked about traveling to Lebanon to take a break.

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"I am not comfortable here, man," Hamdan said to an undercover FBI informant who acted like a friend. "I don't have a degree. I have nothing. Work is not that good. There is nothing good. ... I haven't been able to help my parents as I should."

What Hamdan didn't realize is that the man he was talking to was a paid informant for the FBI, according to testimony in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

The informant also was dealing with immigration problems, and the agency promised to help him stay in the U.S. in exchange for his cooperation, FBI Special Agent Thomas Huse testified.

"He was receiving an immigration benefit by working with the government," Huse said in court.

In March 2014, Hamdan was arrested at Detroit Metro Airport for trying to fly to Lebanon allegedly to join Hezbollah, which in Arabic translates to Hiz b'Allah or Party of God. In August, he pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his travel plans and is set to be sentenced in November.

Hamdan's lawyer, Arthur Weiss, said Hamdan wasn't traveling to Lebanon for Hezbollah but to recharge, visit religious shrines, and for dental work, which is less expensive in the Middle Eastern country.

Like Abu-Rayyan, Hamdan was never charged with any terrorism crime.

But in court and to the media, prosecutors sought to portray Hamdan as an extremist who was potentially violent. It's a pattern seen in other cases prosecuted in Detroit, from Talal Chahine, the former owner of the La Shish chain of Middle Eastern restaurants, to Abu-Rayyan, whom prosecutors allege was supportive of the Islamic State and talked about attacking a large Detroit church, Greater Grace Temple.

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In these cases, the Muslim suspects were unfairly smeared in public and in court files, their defense teams said.

In September 2013, the informant told Huse that "Hamdan had told him that he planned to go to Syria to fight with Hezbollah," the FBI agent testified.

The informant was a Dearborn restaurant owner who knew the former girlfriend of Hamdan through one of the girlfriend's uncles, Weiss said.

"There's a guy in Dearborn who owned a restaurant and he gets wind of the fact that Mohammad (Hamdan) is going back to Lebanon. ... He's got to work off some stuff for the government so the informant can stay in the country. The informant is pressing him about going to fight for Hezbollah," Weiss said.

But Weiss said Hamdan replied by saying, "I'm not going to fight for Hezbollah."

Hamdan's sister, Hiba Hamdan, said in court that her brother also has "significant psychological issues. ... He was easily manipulated."

"He was extremely distraught and depressed over" breaking up with his gilrfriend," Weiss said. This girl was his life, and the informant played upon it."

Sethi, who teaches at law schools, said it's part of federal investigators' pattern.

"The FBI has repeatedly targeted individuals with mental or intellectual disabilities and the indigent with overreaching investigative tactics," he said.

In love with a FBI employee 

A similar type of manipulation happened in Abu-Rayyan's case, his lawyer said.

In September, Abu-Rayyan pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and making a false statement to acquire a firearm. The Dearborn Heights man had purchased a gun while he was using marijuana.

Prosecutors sought to portray him as an ISIS supporter in social media postings and conversations he had with two undercover FBI operatives.

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The FBI started its investigation into Abu-Rayyan in May 2015 after noticing social media postings of his that they say were related to the Islamic State.

In December, the FBI introduced an undercover employee named Ghadda, posing as a 23-year-old Pakistani-American Muslim woman who fell in love with Abu-Rayyan. She flirted with Abu-Rayyan, saying she wanted to marry him.

"My heart, my happiness, my husband," the FBI employee posing as Ghadda texted Abu-Rayyan on Dec. 12.

"I love you soooo much," Abu-Rayyan texted back. "You stole my heart."

Abu-Rayyan saw Ghadda as his future, helping pull him out of a depressing life.

"I was putting 90 hours a week (working at the pizza place) so I had no outside life," he texted the FBI undercover employee.

The FBI employee posing as Ghadda replied: "You make me feel so sad for you. You've been struggling with too much dunya," an Islamic term that describes the current world people live in, as opposed to the afterlife.

But then she suddenly cut off communications, leaving Abu-Rayyan confused and despondent.

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Enter the second FBI agent posing as a Muslim woman named Jannah. Like Ghadda, Jannah flirted with Abu-Rayyan, flattering him and offering a helpful ear.

Jannah, the FBI employee, also appeared to push Abu-Rayyan into violent acts, weaving a story that two of her relatives had been killed in Iraq by a Shia group. That detail has alarmed some local Muslim leaders since it seems like an FBI employee was pushing sectarian tensions between Shias and Sunnis in metro Detroit.

A week before the Feb. 2 call in which she told Abu-Rayyan about committing suicide for Islam, she talked of herself giving up her life for the Islamic State.

She told Abu-Rayyan on Jan. 25: "Uqsem be Allah (I swear to God) if Dawlah (the Islamic State) asks for my life, I would give it up in a heartbeat.

"I want to die for the sake of Allah," she said.

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But Abu-Rayyan tried to prevent her, saying: "Your (sic) young and confused. I don't think you know what you want."

Shanker said Abu-Rayyan's reply shows that he was never really interested in committing any acts of terrorism.

The defense lawyer said the government refused to disclose the total number of informants or undercover employees it used in this case. It's unclear if additional informants were used beyond the two women, Shanker said.

Community concerns 

Nabih Ayad, a Detroit lawyer who is founding chairman of the Arab American Civil Rights League in Dearborn, has handled several cases through the years involving informants among Arab-Americans in Michigan.

"It's always been a concern for this community, especially from a civil-rights perspective," Ayad said. "Provocateurs get someone to say things they don't necessarily mean or do certain conduct they didn't want to."

Ayad and others are especially troubled by the use of women — as seen in the case of Abu-Rayyan — targeting young men, pushing them into extremism.

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"Some men will do anything to please the opposite sex," Ayad said. "That's very much a concern, especially when you're talking about national security issues."

Religious leaders of local mosques expressed concern about how informants are used, though they say they don't mind working with the FBI. Imam Mohammad Elahi, who leads the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, hosted Gelios, the FBI's Detroit director, in June during a Ramadan dinner.

"Here, we don't have anything to hide," Elahi said. "We have an open mosque, an open policy, and there is nothing secret here. And we don't hide anything. And if from FBI you want to come and attend, we never have any problem."

But at the same, "using some individuals as informants, that doesn't help improve the trust and confidence between the Muslim community and intelligence community."

The use of informants has been an issue for years in local Muslim communities. An informant was used in the case of a Detroit Muslim leader, Imam Luqman Abdullah, whom FBI agents in a sting operation shot and killed in October 2009 in a Dearborn warehouse.

An informant was also used in the case of Hutaree, a Christian militia group in Michigan that prosecutors alleged wanted to target law enforcement and overthrow the U.S. government. But after several members were arrested in 2010, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts threw out all of the major charges against the seven defendants. Their lawyer said they were victims of an overzealous prosecution.

Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor who's a law professor at Wayne State University, said that informants are "a standard tactic. ... It's been used since time immemorial."

"But it doesn't work in every case, and it presents real challenges to the FBI, in that they have to be careful. ... Are you drawing someone out? Or are you unfairly enticing them to say things that don't really reflect what they're thinking?"

One of the challenges facing the FBI amid the growing concern of terror attacks is trying to figure out when a suspect may strike.

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"The pressure is on the FBI" to prevent terror attacks, Henning said. "Of course, there's no way to know" with certainty when someone will act. "These types of people can turn in a minute."

Shereef Akeel, a Troy, Mich., lawyer who helped file the April lawsuit that involved allegations of the government pressuring an 18-year-old man to be an informant in exchange for getting off the no-fly, said that the FBI is using this pressure as "a bargaining tool to give an American citizen a right to which they are already entitled to."

Gelios, the FBI chief in Detroit, said that people are not pressured to be sources.

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"We have open dialogue with community groups and groups throughout the area," Gelios said. "They come forward, they call us willingly with information about the potential crimes. ...

"Other times, we have cooperating defendants, we have people who, for a variety of reasons, serve in a confidential human source capacity for us," he said. "Pressuring someone to be a confidential human source is not something I think we do. Now, sometimes an individual has been implicated in various crimes and one of the ways they can help their circumstance is to cooperate with investigators, but no one is ever forced to be a source of the FBI."

On the phone with the FBI 

The woman with the FBI calling herself Jannah tried to convince Abu-Rayyan she cared for him.

Near the end of their phone chat, she asks Abu-Rayyan to see the rope he said he wants to hang himself with.

"Thank you for trusting me in calling me to help you with this," she said.

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Abu-Rayyan replies: "Any time. I love your voice by the way."

"Jazak Allahu Khayran," says Jannah, using an Arabic-language expression in Islam that means: "May God reward you with goodness."

"Smile, don't be sad," she cooed as the conversation ends.

Two days later, the FBI arrested Abu-Rayyan.

Follow Niraj Warikoo on Twitter: @nwarikoo

Listen to the FBI recording

To listen to the recording of the phone call, download the PDF below and open it in Adobe Reader.