An Informant Pushed Him to Plot a Subway Bombing. After 20 Years Behind Bars, He Has a Chance at Freedom.

Twenty years in the past, Shahawar Matin Siraj began to really feel uneasy a couple of plan to bomb a subway station in Manhattan. Osama Eldawoody, a New York Metropolis Police Division informant recruited after 9/11, had established himself as a father determine to Siraj, who was 21 once they met. Eldawoody was virtually twice his age. He had proven Siraj graphic visuals of Muslims being tortured and informed him that suicide bombings have been forbidden however “killing the killers” was not.

Siraj ultimately launched Eldawoody to a pal, James Elshafay, who was 19 on the time. Elshafay began suggesting precise targets, resembling bridges and police precincts. Siraj provided another: the Herald Sq. subway station. Eldawoody informed Siraj that the “Brotherhood” needed to assist his plan. 

However because it began to really feel actual, Siraj tried to again out — insisting about 18 instances that he was not prepared to put bombs within the station. “I’ve to, you recognize, ask my mother’s permission,” he had mentioned — suggesting that probably the most he could be snug with could be appearing as a lookout. Siraj and Elshafay have been arrested every week later.

Elshafay pleaded responsible and was sentenced to 5 years in jail and three of supervised launch. Siraj determined to struggle the costs, went to trial, and was sentenced in 2007 to 30 years in jail after three years of pretrial detention. 

Now, after serving greater than 75 % of his sentence, he and his attorneys at CLEAR, a authorized nonprofit and clinic on the Metropolis College of New York, are preventing for his compassionate launch.

Opening arguments happened on Wednesday earlier than the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan, the place Siraj’s authorized crew is interesting a March 2023 determination from the U.S. District Court docket for the Jap District of New York denying that request. Siraj’s lawyer, Mudassar Hayat Toppa, a workers lawyer at CLEAR, argued that he deserves compassionate launch for a lot of causes, particularly his youth and vulnerability on the time. A forensic psychologist, organized by the protection to guage Siraj for sentencing, had beforehand mentioned that he had impaired crucial considering and analytical abilities. “Primarily based on his mental limitations … he’s inclined to the manipulations and calls for of others,” the knowledgeable famous. Even Siraj’s household described a considerably childlike demeanor; his sister talked about that earlier than his arrest he would watch cartoons and play video video games, significantly Pokémon, on a regular basis. 

The protection additionally pointed on Wednesday to Siraj’s efforts at rehabilitation, together with how he put his personal security in danger to guard a federal corrections official from an act of violence from one other inmate. They emphasised the considerably shorter sentence given to his co-defendant; tough jail circumstances, together with 4 years on the Communications Administration Unit at FCI-Terre Haute; and the discriminatory police surveillance that led regulation enforcement to him. Reasonably than contemplating these causes holistically, the district court docket denied his movement by evaluating each in isolation, they argued. The prosecution refuted this argument on Wednesday, with lawyer Nina Gupta saying that the federal government didn’t view every motive in isolation. In a authorized transient, they cited a map that Siraj had drawn of the subway station and that he failed to satisfy the heavy burden of proof exhibiting that the district court docket “made a clearly misguided evaluation of the proof.”

Siraj is one of just about 1,000 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. since 9/11, in keeping with an Intercept database that was final up to date in June 2023; greater than 350 defendants’ circumstances concerned FBI stings with an informant or spy. The worry of this sort of surveillance reworked the social material of Muslim communities and made them extra insular. 

“You didn’t know if the individual you’re speaking to was an informant or undercover,” says Fahd Ahmed, govt director of Desis Rising Up and Transferring, or DRUM, which represents low-wage South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrants, employees, and youth in New York Metropolis. (Siraj’s household are members.) A 2014 Human Rights Watch report carefully reviewed 27 federal prosecutions involving 77 defendants and located that in some cases, “the FBI might have created terrorists out of law-abiding people by suggesting the concept of taking terrorist motion or encouraging the goal to behave.” The report additionally described a sample of focusing on individuals with psychological or mental disabilities in these stings. 

Siraj’s counsel — like many others — had tried and failed in proving their earlier assertions of entrapment in court docket. Regardless of stories documenting the invasive position of regulation enforcement in encouraging crime, profitable a authorized case utilizing an entrapment protection is actually “unimaginable,” says Kathy Manley, authorized director for Coalition for Civil Freedoms, a nonprofit group that advocates for individuals they consider have been focused in terrorism circumstances as a part of the broader “warfare on terror.” Manley explains that’s as a result of prosecutors simply want to seek out that a person is predisposed to commit a criminal offense with a view to rule out entrapment. They’ll try this by exhibiting that the defendant did not take away themselves from the state of affairs or by pointing to political statements, Manley says. In Siraj’s case, the prosecutors thought of his empathy for Palestinian suicide bombers residing below occupation and his fascination with Osama bin Laden. 

In asking for compassionate launch, CLEAR will not be trying to relitigate the court docket’s verdict on entrapment. The attorneys tried on Wednesday to make clear a letter written by Siraj that they are saying the district court docket “erroneously interpreted.” The defendant had written in a letter to the court docket, “I knew I’d by no means have been concerned in any terrorist plot had I by no means met the informant, however I additionally knew I had made some horrible errors.” The district court docket concluded that “such an assertion will not be an acceptance of duty, however an try to shift blame for terribly critical conduct and to relitigate the underlying info of his case” — and particularly, “the jury’s rejection of his entrapment protection.”

This reasoning was used to reject arguments highlighting Siraj’s rehabilitation, age, and distinctive vulnerabilities, for the reason that district court docket perceived this “unwillingness to just accept duty” as proof that Siraj will not be sufficiently remorseful, after 17 years in jail, for his actions. CLEAR highlighted a number of different express admissions of duty and regret for his position within the conspiracy. “I additionally know that I’m in the end chargeable for my actions and the implications that resulted from them,” Siraj had written.

Compassionate launch has been granted in related circumstances earlier than, albeit hardly ever. Final July, a U.S. district decide ordered the discharge of three males convicted in a terrorism sting, saying that “the true lead conspirator was america.” Three males from the “Newburgh 4” have been freed after the decide discovered that they have been little greater than “petty criminals” and that FBI brokers had been the key driver of a supposed plot to explode synagogues in New York and shoot down official planes.

After Wednesday’s trial, Siraj’s lawyer mentioned that proof of his consumer’s rehabilitation is among the many most compelling he’s seen in compassionate launch circumstances. “This case is essential not only for Siraj,” Toppa mentioned, “but in addition for others serving lengthy sentences on terrorism-related convictions, whose redeeming conduct and statements throughout their incarceration are scrutinized to an unreasonable diploma and dismissed by courts seemingly due to the character of their offense.”

As Siraj waits for the court docket’s verdict, he has now spent 20 of his 42 years behind bars. His household is shattered too. After Siraj’s arrest in 2004, neighborhood members, together with some kin, pulled away and averted visiting their house or saying howdy on the road, says Ahmed, the director of DRUM. That’s a standard dynamic with households whose family members have been charged with terrorism in circumstances involving informants. “They’re frightened about getting painted as terrorism sympathizers,” Ahmed says. As for Siraj’s mom, Ahmed says she hardly ever leaves her house as a result of she doesn’t wish to miss a cellphone name from him.