Monitoring of Muslim students assailed

Student groups throughout the Northeast are condemning the monitoring of Muslim college students by the NYPD, while leaders of Muslim groups are calling for investigations.

The NYPD monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools well beyond the city limits, including Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and sent an undercover agent on a white-water rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Detectives trawled Muslim student websites daily and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for Commissioner Ray Kelly.

A 2006 report said officers from the NYPD's Cyber Intelligence unit visited the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations as a "daily routine." The universities included Yale, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse, New York University, Clarkson University, Rutgers University, the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam, Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and LaGuardia Community College.

A spokesman said police wanted to get a better handle on student associations. He cited 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations.