Since 9/11, informants in mosques and in Muslim communities have led to the prosecution of more than two hundred people. The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice report Targeted and Entrapped outlines various problems with the use of such informers, not the least of which is that they are recruited through threats, as mentioned above, as well as bribes—such as reduced criminal charges or a change in immigration status, creating what the report calls “a dangerous incentive structure.” Its authors found that in the cases they studied, the “government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe that it was their duty to take action against the United States.” The informants also goaded the defendants to acquire violent videos and weapons which were later used to convict them, and even went so far as to pick the locations that were to be attacked. In short, without the active leadership of the agents provocateurs, the “foiled terror plots” would never have existed.

QUESTION: How prevalent is entrapment by informants across other counterterrorism contexts, and what safeguards exist against it?

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 473