Terrorism: The FBI trap

WASHINGTON – undercover, the FBI agent provided the jihadist a car full of (fake) explosives and arrested him: Police said this method of "trap" by experts is "legitimate" because it can thwart attacks, but "risky" if it encourages crime.

•     Aged 29, an American was arrested Wednesday at Springfield (Illinois, North) as he tried to explode a truck bomb remotely. The vehicle had actually been prepared by undercover FBI agents and was totally safe.
  
      Aged 19, a Jordanian residing illegally in the United States was arrested Thursday in Dallas (Texas, South). Approached for several months by U.S. agents working undercover, he has placed, near a skyscraper, a car bomb that the agents had filled with fake bombs.
  
      In a fresh America, out of the Bush administration and its excesses in the fight against terrorism, the role that police have played in the passage to the act remains a sore point even if the population  is particularly anxious not to be the victim of another attack.
  
      According to U.S. authorities, each of the two men acted on behalf of Al Qaeda, but they had shared their projects with the only undercover agents.
  
      During the months when they were under surveillance, they still expressed "several times" their willingness to commit attacks against the United States.
  
      If talking is not enough to trigger lawsuits in the United States, according to lawyers interviewed by AFP, the fact that they themselves have identified the places then they have been driving the vehicles can be sufficient.
  
      "Acting and want to do is different," explains Francesca Laguardia, research director at New York University. "A debate currently exists and their lawyers will probably argue that it is not fair," she says.
  
      She said however that "it is very rare to be able to demonstrate the trapping" and be acquitted. In fact, it is the defendant who has to prove that he was not "predisposed" to terrorism and that he "would never do that if the police had not approached and had not spoken so he changes his mind."
  
      To verify that the police did not exert too much influence on the two defendants must "go back and discover how the first contact between the men and the undercover agents took place, who had the idea first placing a bomb outside a building and whether the defendants have resisted this proposal," explains Jack King, communications director of the National Association of Defense Counsel.
  
      But he acknowledges that a jury listens more willingly to the word of the policeman who tries to thwart attacks that any defendant in a terrorism case.
  
      The "trap" is, said David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington, "a legitimate investigative tactic but complicated and risky. It has already helped thwart the attacks but he added, "the danger is that you can create crimes that would not have happened otherwise."
  
      "In the aftermath of September 11, he continues, this technique has been used in questionable circumstances, where the government invented crimes that never existed" without the intervention of its officers.
  
      
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.