The New York Police Department (NYPD) has reportedly labelled entire mosques as 'terrorist organisations' and since the 9/11 attacks the department has conducted at least a dozen 'terrorism enterprise investigations' (TEI) into mosques.
According to the confidential police documents obtained by a news agency, the TEI tool allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
The documents reveal that many TEIs go on for years allowing surveillance to continue even when there is no valid proof of the mosque of Islamic organization being criminally charged with operating as a terrorism enterprise, Sky News reports.
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Representational pic-AFP
The report said that labelling an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of investigation and fair game for surveillance.
The revelations about the spying operations are part of a new book authored by the reporters of the news agency.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly did not deny the existence of the spying programme but accused the news agency reporters of ‘hyping a book’ adding that the agency works in accordance to the leaks it gets.
Kelly further said that the police officials are not intimidated with where the leads take them and they do it to protect the people of the New York City.
The revelations come in light of the department’s battle with lawsuits claiming that it engages in racial profiling while combating crime and earlier this month, a judge ruled that NYPD’s use of the stop-and-frisk tactic was ‘unconstitutional’.
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