Spy or Risk Green Card: How the Bush Administration 'Recruits' Muslim Informants

We now look at a largely covert aspect of the Bush administration's War on Terror - the government's aggressive pursuit of Muslim informants. This week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, "A Muslim's Choice: Turn U.S Informant or Risk Losing Visa." The report detailed the case of Yassine Ouassif. Last November Yassine's green card was taken away from him when he crossed the border from Canada. Yassine was then sent home to San Francisco and told to contact a counterterrorism agent at the FBI. The article states that the agent "made him an offer: become an informant and regularly report to the FBI on what his Muslim friends in San Francisco were saying and doing. In exchange he would get back his green card." According to Yassine, if he refused, the agent threatened to deport him back to Morocco.

* Banafsheh Akhlaghi, attorney for Yassine Ouassif. She is founder and president of the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement ( http://www.legalsanctuary.org/ ).

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