[Mb-civic] Pakistan Protests over U.S. Sting By BBC News

[Michael Butler]

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    Pakistan Protests over U.S. Sting
    By BBC News

     Monday 09 August 2004

     Pakistan has protested to the United States over what it says was an
FBI sting operation involving a fake plot to kill Pakistan's UN envoy.

     Islamabad called the operation bizarre and mind-boggling.

     A spokesman said it had endangered the life of Munir Akram, Pakistan's
permanent envoy to the United Nations.

     Two men are being held in the US for allegedly laundering money for an
agent posing as a militant who wanted to use a missile to kill Mr. Akram.

     Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan asked why the US
authorities had not picked an American "target" instead.

     "It is mind-boggling why they could not use the name of an American
functionary," he told a news conference.

     He said that Pakistan had spoken to the US embassy in Islamabad and
that it hoped America would "realise its mistake and give instructions for
rectifying this faulty methodology".

     'Auto-suggestion'
    Two leaders of a mosque in Albany, New York, were arrested this month on
charges of money-laundering and providing support to terrorism after a sting
operation.

     Yassin Aref, the imam of the mosque, and Mohammed Hossain, the mosque's
founder, allegedly laundered money for a man who they believed had purchased
a shoulder-fired missile to assassinate Mr. Akram.

     In fact, the man was working undercover for the US government as part
of a surveillance operation going back a year.

     Mr. Khan said Pakistani diplomats were at greater risk as a result of
the operation.

     "This technique and methodology is tantamount to auto-suggestion and
could have endangered the life of our ambassador," he said.

     Pakistan has been a close ally of the US in its "war on terror".

  

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