NYPD monitored Muslim students far beyond city

Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Detectives trawled Muslim student websites every day and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly.

The latest documents mention no wrongdoing by any students.

In one report, an undercover officer describes accompanying 18 Muslim students from the City College of New York on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York on April 21 2008. The officer noted the names of those there, who were officers of the Muslim Student Association.

“In addition to the regularly scheduled events (rafting), the group prayed at least four times a day, and much of the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was religious in nature,” the report says.

Praying five times a day is one of the core traditions of Islam.

Jawad Rasul, one of the students on the trip, said he was stunned that his name was included in the police report. “It forces me to look around wherever I am now,” he said.

But another student, Ali Ahmed, whom the NYPD said appeared to be in charge of the trip, said: “I can’t blame them for doing their job. There’s lots of Muslims doing some bad things and it gives a bad name to all of us, so they have to take their due diligence.”

Asked about the monitoring, police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list of 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations, which the NYPD referred to as MSAs.

Jesse Morton, who this month pleaded guilty to posting online threats against the creators of the animated TV show South Park, had once tried to recruit followers at Stony Brook University on Long Island, Mr Browne said.

“As a result, the NYPD deemed it prudent to get a better handle on what was occurring at MSAs,” he said. He said police monitored student websites and collected publicly-available information, but did so only between 2006 and 2007.

Mr Kelly and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg have repeatedly said that the police follow only legitimate leads about suspected criminal activity. Yesterday, the mayor’s office referred any further comment to the NYPD.