Together with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area Office (CAIR-SFBA), The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Markaz: Resource Center at Stanford, ACS is hosting a documentary screening of the Emmy Nominated and Peabody Awarded documentary, The Newburgh Sting, on Wednesday, October 14th, at 6:45 p.m.

The film details the May 2009 apprehension of four Muslim men from the impoverished and largely African-American city of Newburgh, NY, for an alleged terror plot. Defense lawyers argued that their clients were illegally entrapped by the FBI sting operation that had them under surveillance the entire time, claiming that the FBI’s informant, a Pakistani-born man posing as a terrorism supporter, lured the Americans into actions they never would have taken without the government-manufactured plot. Even though a jury found the four guilty, and each was sentenced to 25 years in prison under the law, Judge Colleen McMahon agreed that “there would have been no crime” without the government’s instigation and planning of the sting. (For a full synopsis of the film, click here.)

Following the screening, our very own SLS Professor Shirin Sinnar will moderate a discussion with CAIR-SFBA Northern California Civil Rights Coordinator Brice Hamack and University of South Carolina Law School Professor Wadie Said, Author of Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions, to address the issues raised by the film.

The event will be held in the History Corner (Building 200 on the edge of the main quad–map here), Room 205 and is free and open to the public.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/156980934648790/