Muslims on US watch list should be electronically tagged: former NYC mayor

Former New York City mayor, who is advising Donald Trump on national security, says electronic tags should be considered for those on terrorism lists.

“I would think that’s an excellent idea,” Giuliani told NJ.com. “If you’re on the terror watch list, I should know you’re on the terror watchlist. You’re on there for a reason,” said Rudy Giuliani at an RNC at the DNC event.



The former NYC mayor added that Republican nominee Trump could employ the same tactics used in France. One of the attackers who killed a priest in Normandy, France, on Tuesday was wearing an electronic tag. He had reportedly been arrested and detained for 10 months after attempting to go to Syria. Upon his release, security services put an electronic tag on him and he was only allowed to leave his house between 8.30am and 12.30pm; the time frame during which he committed the crime.

Electronic tags have been considered in various countries as a way to monitor potential terrorism suspects. A UK judge ruled last year that it was a violation of the European Convention of Human Rights to ask a suspect to wear a tag. However, former head of the national counter-terrorism security office, Chris Phillips, told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme that the France attacks showed how ineffective tags are.



“[As] we have seen in France, that is ridiculous, because someone can have a tag on and go and commit an offence and the tag is not even being monitored,” he said. “Two thousand people on the radar of terrorists … How on earth could you ever monitor 2,000 people, let alone the number we have got now?,” he said.

The federal government’s terror watch list, which Giuliani suggested using, has long been a source of controversy, as the guidelines required for adding individuals are very broad. At the event on Wednesday, Giuliani touted his record of surveillance in mosques after the 1993 World Trade Center attack. “I put undercover agents in mosques for the first time in January 1994,” he said.



“I did it because the 1993 bombing was planned in a mosque in Union City, New Jersey, and a second plan was uncovered to bomb our subways, which was foiled,” Giuliani said. “And I kept those police officers in those mosques until I left as mayor.”

In 2011, an investigation by the Associated Press revealed a secretive NYPD program that was undertaking blanket surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. The police unit that oversaw the surveillance program was disbanded in April 2014, after it was criticised and was sued by civil liberties groups.

This article originally appeared on Guardian.