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On Wednesday, several Muslim leaders, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, wrote to Bill Montgomery, the county attorney of Maricopa in Arizona, in protest of an event sponsored by his office to “tell the truth” about Muslim terrorist organizations.
The event, titled “Understanding the Threat” and scheduled for next week, will be presented by John Guandolo, a disgraced former FBI agent who focuses on the supposed threat of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
Legal director of the ACLU of Arizona Dan Pochoda spoke about the event, saying, “He’s got a hateful message. It’s so symbolically wrong because it’s a message of hate and racism.”
However, Montgomery responded to the criticism by saying, “It’s apparent to me that the training is mischaracterized”.
Montgomery also said the he heard of the program, before sending employees to see it in action and determine if it was applicable for law-enforcement officers in Arizona.
“I’m comfortable with the training they’re going to get”, he said before adding that he had spoken to local Muslim groups regarding the session.
However, the session has been cancelled in many parts of the US, including in Kansas, where several Muslim groups had strongly protested the training.
In its mission statement, Understanding the Threat, the organization running the sessions, said that it “provides threat-focused strategic and operational consultation, training and education for federal, state and local leadership and agencies in government, the private sector and for private citizens”. Its main argument is that the Muslim Brotherhood wants to “overthrow the United States of America and reduce the American people under the tyranny of Islamic law”.
The group’s founder Guandolo made headlines back in 2009 when he resigned from his position in the FBI after his affair with a source in a corruption case he was investigating. Civil rights organization The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Guandolo as a “former FBI agent who has made a living calling out high-ranking government officials as secret plants working for the Muslim Brotherhood.