We've all seen it on television. The defense attorney argues his client was "entrapped". That is, that it wasn't the defendant's idea to commit the crime, but that the police planted the idea and urged him to do it.
Many of us have heard allegations that post-9/11 arrests of suspected Al Qaeda members were based on very thin information. Did you realize that all or virtually all of these arrests occurred due to entrapment? For example:
- PBS' Frontline ran a special report focusing on the the alleged Al Qaeda plot in Lodi, California, which showed -- based upon interviews with top law enforcement officials involved in the case -- that the bust amounted to little more than entrapment and coerced and fabricated confessions from two men who, in fact, had nothing to do with the terrorist group
- The Washington Post ran a story about one alleged threat entitled "Was it a terror sting or entrapment?", showing that the U.S. government lent material support to the wanna-be terrorists, and put violent ideas in their heads
- Raw Story reports that the alleged terrorist group that is alleged to have planned to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was non-violent before a government informant infiltrated the group and planted violent ideas in their heads
- There are numerous other instances of entrapment of peaceful or mentally incompetent people who are then arrested as "terrorists" (see this, this and this)
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