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The Informer: Behind the Scenes, or Setting the Stage?
"It's something that had to be done," says Osama Eldawoody, an NYPD informer whose work helped convict Shahawar Matin Siraj.
(By Robin Shulman -- The Washington Post)
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Soon Eldawoody began to drive Siraj home from work nearly every day. At some point, talk turned toward the idea of planting a bomb, and by spring, Eldawoody said, "I told them, 'I believe it's time to record.' "
"You are my brother," Siraj said at one point in more than 30 hours of digital recordings. At another, Eldawoody refers to Siraj as his "son."
Andrews, Eldawoody's handler, wrote in his notes that the informer found Siraj to be "impressionable."
As they discussed possible attacks, it was Eldawoody who suggested getting uranium-235 and using a remote-controlled detonation. It was Eldawoody who suggested obtaining nuclear materials from the Russian mafia. "Oh, we can't find it over here, like in Florida?" asks Siraj, who then suggested looking for nuclear materials near the Rocky Mountains, or calling Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan for advice.
Sometimes the conversations, recorded mostly in Eldawoody's car, included James Elshafay, a 19-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic who later pleaded guilty and testified against Siraj.
Eldawoody concocted a fictitious group, the Brotherhood, in Upstate New York, that he promised would supply explosives. But the Brothers needed Siraj's knowledge of the subway to place the bombs. In the last recording, a video, inside Eldawoody's Toyota on Aug. 23, 2004, Siraj said he didn't want to place the bomb himself, and said he would have to ask his mother for permission.
Later, his mother, Shahina Parveen, a nurse, said he never asked. Still, Siraj went with diagrams to the 34th Street subway station to point out to Elshafay and Eldawoody optimal places for explosives.
Three days before the Republican National Convention in New York, Siraj was arrested outside his uncle's bookstore. News of Eldawoody's role in the case left a wake of fear and suspicion in Muslim communities. (He had advance notice of the arrest and fled with his family to Pennsylvania.)
"If Matin [Siraj] had really been a criminal, and had really been planning on carrying out a bombing operation and Osama [Eldawoody] had discovered it, I would consider Osama a hero," says Imam Reda Shata, who served in the Bay Ridge mosque and believed at one point Eldawoody may have tried to set a trap for him. "But he was a young, ignorant, emotional kid."
Last May, the jury convicted Siraj, and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly hailed the decision as a victory for the department's fight against terrorism.
Worry and Tension
Lately, Eldawoody tends to talk less about Siraj and more about his life circumstances. He cruises the wide aisles of his neighborhood Wal-Mart with Fotna and Marwa, repeatedly mentioning his need for a job.
Fotna, 52, who had a career as a dentist before her marriage, has dark eyes, a lively, humorous way and a take-charge attitude. She tells how last summer the lease on the family's Pennsylvania apartment was about to run out, and they feared becoming homeless.
