FBI Using Dubious Entrapment to Arrest Terrorism Suspects

[marmar]

(The Progressive) A new report by Human Rights Watch and the Columbia Law School focuses on the dubiousness of federal terrorism sting tactics.

The 214-page study, “Illusion of Justice,” is a detailed examination of twenty-seven terrorism cases—and the questionable methods that prosecutors employed.

“For years, Human Rights Watch has documented human rights violations in the U.S. criminal justice system,” Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director of Human Rights Watch and a co-author of the report, tells The Progressive. “We thought it was important to look specifically at the treatment of terrorism suspects in U.S. federal courts, and also to document the impact abusive counterterrorism policies have on American Muslim communities.”

The report underscores how hard it is to demonstrate that suspects have been entrapped by the feds—and how anti-foreigner and anti-Islam prejudice makes it all the more difficult.

“U.S. law requires that to prove entrapment a defendant show both that the government induced him to commit the act in question and that he was not ‘predisposed’ to commit it,” the report states. “This predisposition inquiry focuses attention on the defendant’s background, opinions, beliefs, and reputation—in other words, not on the crime, but on the nature of the defendant. This character inquiry makes it exceptionally difficult for a defendant to succeed in raising the entrapment defense, particularly in the terrorism context, where inflammatory stereotypes and highly charged characterizations of Islam and foreigners often prevail.” .........(more)

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/07/187798/fbi-using-dubious-entrapment-arrest-terrorism-suspects#sthash.Dew1V4cL.dpuf

[get the red out]

1. It's pitiful

Law enforcement resources wasted on these kinds of fruitless stunts by the FBI. Absolutely idiotic, and so easy to see through. Every time I see one of these entrapment-created terrorist stings the falseness of it sticks out like a sore thumb. How doesn't everyone see through them? This does nothing to make us safer, to say the least.