Update: More details on FBI informant's tactics
CS-2 has been busy.
Rochester's two recent high-profile terrorism-related arrests apparently share a common denominator — an informant, referred to as CS-2, who worked for the FBI in the arrests of both Mufid Elfgeeh and Emanuel Lutchman.
Elfgeeh, a Rochester pizza shop owner, has pleaded guilty to recruiting for the terrorist network, the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL. Lutchman was arrested Wednesday and accused of an ISIS-inspired plot to abduct or kill patrons at a Rochester bar on New Year's Eve.
FBI spokeswoman Maureen Dempsey declined to discuss the Lutchman investigation or to comment about whether the informant CS-2 in the two cases is the same, but court papers make clear that he likely is. (CS is shorthand for "confidential source" and the number simply differentiates informants in a case.)
Rochester terrorist Mufid Elfgeeh guilty of recruiting for ISIS
Rochester man linked to ISIS planned New Year's Eve attack on bar, feds say
And the informant's activities could add to a refrain that has become common after similar FBI arrests of alleged terrorist sympathizers: Was the target of the investigation a true threat and terrorist sympathizer or was he instead pushed toward an illegal plot by informants paid by federal law enforcement?
Both elected and state and federal officials were quick to praise the work of the FBI Thursday.
"The good news is, Virginia, that law enforcement worked," Gov. Andrew Cuomo told Virginia Butler in a Time Warner Cable interview Thursday. "The federal agencies have done a magnificent job."
Merchants Grill target of terror plot, co-owner says
But social media, which can provide a crude portal into public perception, was abundant with the varying views of Lutchman's arrest and his alleged plot to attack and kill patrons at Merchants Grill on New Year's Eve. (The bar co-owner, John Page, said Thursday that the FBI told him his establishment was the target.)
On Twitter and Facebook there was applause for the work of law enforcement for possibly thwarting a bloody holiday attack while there were also questions about whether Lutchman, a troubled and fragile man with a history of mental illness, was truly much of a threat. (There was also the expected sprinkling of Islamophobia.)
The FBI has been accused of being overzealous in its pursuit of terrorist sympathizers.
A 2014 Human Rights Watch report analyzed 27 federal terrorism cases and concluded: "Many prosecutions have properly targeted individuals engaged in planning or financing terror attacks. ... But many others have targeted people who do not appear to have been involved in terrorist plotting or financing at the time the government began to investigate them."
The same paid informants worked multiple cases investigated by Human Rights Watch, prompting concerns that the informants were enticing vulnerable targets into criminal plots, Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch and a co-author of the report, said in an interview Friday.
"The FBI finds the informant they're happy with and the informant's happy because he makes a lot of money," she said.
Some of the cases highlighted by the report showed the mentally ill were manipulated into criminal plans, Prasow said, noting that she does not have information on the Lutchman case.
"There are definitely legitimate cases but the problems we saw popped up time and time again," she said.
It's typically impossible to determine the legitimacy of an arrest in the days — or even weeks or months — immediately afterward because of the limited public information available, Prasow said. Not until thorough and specific details become available about the interactions between the informant and target is a clear picture possible, she said.
"You can't know until you get the transcripts with the informant," she said.
Lutchman allegedly communicated with a man he considered to be within the ranks of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Lutchman, who apparently converted to the Muslim religion while in state prison for a robbery charge, became convinced that to join the ISIS ranks, he needed to execute a terrorist act in the United States, an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Timothy Klapec alleges.
Lutchman then allegedly discussed his plans in conversations with FBI informants — conversations that were recorded.
"Lutchman discussed with CS-2 doing assassinations and using a pressure cooker bomb," the affidavit states.
The informant CS-2 began working with the FBI around November 2013, the court papers state. He was once convicted of an attempted drug sale and served a year in jail on the charge. He also has a previous misdemeanor drug-connected conviction.
An informant in the Elfgeeh case, also CS-2, has the exact same defining characteristics.
"As of December 2015, the FBI has paid CS-2 a total of approximately $7,400 in exchange for his cooperation in an unrelated investigation," Klapec wrote in the Dec. 30, 2015, affidavit.
At one point, court papers say, Lutchman considered abandoning the New Year's Eve plot after another informant, at the direction of investigators, told Lutchman he was dropping out of the attack. "CS-2 ... told Lutchman not to let (the informant's) backing out of the operation upset him."
Afterward, Lutchman allegedly proposed that "they kidnap a couple of people and kill them." He and CS-2 drove by Merchants Grill, which Lutchman allegedly identified as a possible target, then the next day — Tuesday — bought materials at Walmart on Hudson Avenue for the attack.
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There, with CS-2 paying for the goods, they bought a machete, knives, zipties, duct tape, ammonia and latex gloves, the FBI alleges. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Lutchman Wednesday as he drove with CS-2.
Lutchman is scheduled to be in federal court Jan. 8. Court papers show he is a mentally unstable man who has been jailed for a robbery, when he was only 16, and subsequent minor crimes. He has a case of alleged domestic violence against a girlfriend now pending.
Beverley Carridice-Henry, Lutchman’s grandmother, raised him from age 2 to 13 in New York City and Florida and spoke to him regularly while he was in prison and after he was released. She said he was on and off his medication and accused law enforcement of taking advantage of him.
Grandmother: FBI wanted Lutchman as informant
“Whatever went down, the family is sorry,” she said. “We do not support radical Islam. We don’t. We’re sorry for what happened. But, they sent this guy to befriend him and set him up in a sting. How is that right? For the federal government to set up youths that they know are vulnerable?”
The court papers, however, allege that Lutchman made statements showing a willingness to kill. "I will take a life," he allegedly told CS-2. "I don't have a problem with that."
In the aftermath of arrests like Lutchman's, the issue of legal "entrapment" often arises. But, for an individual to be "entrapped" under the law, he or she has to show no initial willingness to commit the crime. In essence, if the accused has suggested the criminal activity, police can then build "sting" scenarios that lead to an arrest.
Bar co-owner, customers undeterred after terror arrest
Police "can help them all they want as long as there is a predisposition," said former Federal Public Defender William Clauss.
Clauss has his own history with the FBI and terrorism cases. He was one of the defense lawyers in the Lackawanna Six case, in which Yemeni-American men who lived in Lackawanna, New York, admitted to traveling to al-Qaeda camps for terrorist training.
After the men were charged, Clauss said, there was "a certain sentiment (among their supporters) that they hadn't really done anything." But, Clauss said, the defense lawyers fully understood why the suspicion built around the men and the arrests were made.
It's understandable, he said, why the FBI may act aggressively if there is a legitimate belief of a pending terrorist-connected threat — "the kind of scenario where you err on the side of caution."