The Informer: Behind the Scenes, or Setting the Stage?

The Bay Ridge Mosque

He came to Brooklyn in 1986 with a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from Egypt, and worked various jobs -- from ice cream vendor to taxi driver -- while applying for engineering work. Then he gave up and tried his hand at real estate in New Jersey.

There he played a pivotal role in helping to convict a building inspector after the man demanded bribes and Eldawoody got him to discuss them while being recorded. He concluded he had a talent for such work.

"I'm no dummy," he says. "I know how to get people to the point."

After 9/11, first the FBI, then local police came knocking on Eldawoody's door in Staten Island because someone had reported suspicions of him. The second time, Eldawoody accused the police of discrimination -- then he volunteered to help them. He signed up as an NYPD confidential informer in July 2003.

Eldawoody was dispatched to several mosques before he was asked to infiltrate the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a storefront mosque in the city's largest Arab community. He became known for praying so fervently he would weep. Once, he objected to the presence of two non-Muslims in the mosque in order to seem fanatical about religion, he told his handler, Detective Stephen Andrews.

For months he turned up little. Then he met 21-year-old Siraj.

Recently arrived from Pakistan, Siraj was spending his days working at his uncle's Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge and his nights playing video games at his family's apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Back home in Karachi, his religiously moderate family had been attacked by politically radical Sunni Muslims. But in New York, Siraj began to make his way in this new world of Muslim men. His uncle, Saleem Noorali, encouraged him to embrace Sunni beliefs and pray next to the bookstore at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge. "He started reading books, then asking questions of the imam and people praying here," says Noorali. "He was confused, learning."

Immigration officials were trying to deport Siraj's family for overstaying their visas, and the family had requested asylum on grounds of religious persecution. Meanwhile, Siraj was upset by the wars raging in the Mideast, and by the reports of abuses of Muslims at Abu Ghraib. He was haunted and angered by a story he had heard about the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old Muslim girl by U.S. troops, according to recordings of his conversations.

His impassioned talk gained the attention of the undercover detective from Bangladesh who surveyed the Bay Ridge mosque before Eldawoody. He later testified that he saw Siraj 72 times and reported that he called Osama bin Laden "a talented brother" and "hoped bin Laden planned something big for America."

Eldawoody met Siraj in September 2003 at the Islamic bookstore. There are no recordings of their early conversations. Only the barest sketch of the early relationship is preserved in the files of the NYPD's Terrorist Interdiction Unit.

"The very beginning started when he asked me if I could design a nuclear bomb," Eldawoody says in an interview. "I told him yes." But Martin R. Stolar, Siraj's lawyer, referring in court to police notes from Dec. 23, 2003, suggested that Siraj had simply asked why Eldawoody didn't work as a nuclear engineer -- and Eldawoody told Siraj that he was capable of creating a dirty bomb.