By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com
A 31-year-old Illinois man claims the FBI said it could remove him from the no-fly list if he agreed to go undercover at mosques, the Associated Press reported. He refused the offer.
AP reported that Abe Mashal, a dog trainer from St. Charles, Ill., says the bureau said he landed on the list because he exchanged emails with a Muslim cleric who the FBI was watching.
AP reported that he sent an email to cleric asking about raising children in an interfaith family. He is Muslim, his wife is Christian.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security declined comment, AP reported.
Mashal, who discovered he was on the list last April, says he is an honorably discharged Marine, AP reported. He is one of 17 plaintiffs in an ACLU-filed lawsuit over the list.
Mashal told AP he felt like he was being blackmailed by the FBI when the agency tried to get im to go undercover.
“I feel like I’m living in communist Russia, not the United States of America, for someone to jump into my life like that,” he said.
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