Who is Mel? US terror case could unmask New York police mole
NEW YORK — For years, a woman named “Mel” mingled with young Muslims in New York, telling them she was a Turkish convert to the faith looking for friends. In reality, she was a cop working for the New York Police Department.
Her true identity and the full nature of her work remain a guarded secret, but, thanks partly to social media, she may be unmasked as part of an upcoming trial of two women accused of plotting a homemade bomb attack.
By combing the web, attorneys for the two defendants, Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, say they have obtained the agent’s photograph and learned her real name.
And in recent weeks, they got a judge’s permission for a plan to circulate her picture at area mosques in order to build a case that their clients were entrapped by someone fishing for harmless people to lure into a phoney plot.