Shahawar Matin Siraj is a Pakistani-American who was convicted in 2006 of terrorism conspiracy, regarding a plot to bomb a New York City Subway station in Manhattan.
[1][2] According to the New York City Police Department, Siraj was "extremely impressionable due to severe intellectual limitations" and never actually agreed to carry out an attack.
[3] In April 2021, the New York Times published an extensive investigative journalism report making the case that Siraj was the victim of an entrapment scheme orchestrated by the FBI.
[9] They attacked the credibility of the prosecution's lead witness, Osama Eldawoody, on grounds that he was paid a total of $100,000 for his work as an informer, $25,000 of which he received during the year he conversed with Siraj.
[11] The validity of the tapes was raised, and it was asserted that they may have been subject to review and censorship by the New York City Police Department, which was working alongside Eldawoody during his information-gathering visits.
The prosecutors, Todd Harrison and Marshall L. Miller, used digital recording from the defendant's conversations with Eldawoody, which were secretly made by the informant and handed to the police department as evidence.
In these recordings, Siraj expressed excitement and pride in a plot to kill American civilians in Herald Square, which was strongly incriminating, albeit in a crime the defense felt was framed.
When Eldawoody told him that he was part of a terrorist organization from his country and that he could produce the materials to build a subway bomb, Siraj jumped onto the idea, they claim.