A 19-year-old John Jay College student, who worked for the NYPD’s intelligence unit under orders to bait Muslims into saying inflammatory things, denounced his work as a paid informant to The Associated Press on Oct. 23.
American Shaimur Rahman, who is of Bangladeshi descent, was paid as much as $1,000 a month and was asked to work with the NYPD in exchange for covering up a string of minor marijuana arrests.
The NYPD instructed him to use a strategy called “create and capture,” which involved starting conversations about terrorism or random radical acts in the name of Islam and then capture the response to send to the NYPD. He received little training and told the AP that he spied on “everything and anyone.”
Officers from the Queens College Muslim Students Association denied seeing this student at any QC events — despite sources indicating otherwise — and chose to not respond to the presence of possible informants in their prayer rooms or at their events, saying political issues were not in line with their goals as a religious organization. The NYPD has denied the presence of informants on the QC campus and MSA officers have had no suspicions otherwise.
“We have focused on relief efforts, educating others about Islam, building ties with the campus community and providing a place for people to feel comfortable,” MSA President Saad Jawed said.
