Peter King: Surveillance of Mosques Needed — ‘Not Enough’ Muslims Cooperating

Tuesday night on Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said we need to start surveillance on mosques because “not enough mosques and imams cooperate.”

King said, “There is a number of mosques on Long Island where they welcome the police in. They have brotherhood meetings, and they have breakfasts, et cetera. These are community-type meetings. And then we find out later that they had radicals in those mosques. They had young men who claim they’d wanted to do jihad. One actually — young man, went to Afghanistan where he was arrested fighting alongside al Qaeda. He had gone to the mosque, told the mosque that he planned radical activity. At the same time that these mosque leaders were meeting with the police. So there was this great friendship going on, but they never told the police was what was going on in the mosque, never told them about this radical activity. Another young man on long island arrested who belongs to a different mosque. And the people in the mosque said yes, they were radical, but they never told police. The oldest brother who actually on the positive side, he was actually ejected from a mosque because he was so radical. But on the negative side, that was never told to the police.”

“So if they had told the police, it’s possible, very likely that the Boston marathon bombing would not have occur,” he continued. “And again, another example in New York. There was an imam that the NYPD did trust. This was back in 2009. He was the one they trusted the most. And when the NYPD heard that a quid explosive bomber was coming to New York to attack the subway system, he was being monitored. But they also knew he had other cohorts in New York City. And they went to the imam, asked for advice. Can you help us find who these three other guys are. The first thing he did, the imam they trusted, he contacted the suspect’s father and tipped them off that the NYPD was looking for their son who was coming to New York to blow up the subway system. You need both. Unfortunately, not enough mosques and imams cooperate.”