NEW YORK: The New York Police have disbanded a special unit that was created essentially for monitoring the Muslim community in the aftermath of 9/11 terror attacks, a police spokesman told reporters on Tuesday.

The establishment of the unit was roundly criticised by Muslim community leaders and civil rights groups in the city after Associated Press broke the story three years ago.

The controversial ‘zone assessment unit’, which for a time also was known as the ‘demographic unit,’ came into existence by 2003 was set up to find out where ethnic populations, particularly from the Muslim countries, settled in the city.

The underlying motive was to use the unit’s database to locate mosques, Internet shops, bookstores and other places where would-be terrorists might stop to make contacts while in transit.

”By and large what they found was that a lot of information from the zone assessment unit was information that could have just as readily been obtained from other community outreach programmes,” the police spokesman said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and other liberal Democrats praised the news that the unit was being disbanded. “I commend Commissioner [William] Bratton and the NYPD leadership for taking a strong stand to protect the civil liberties of New Yorkers --while still keeping us safe -- by disbanding a programme that had drawn strong and broad criticism, including from the FBI,” de Blasio said in a statement.

But Republican party’s Congressman Peter King believes the Muslim community still poses a major terror threat to New York City.

”The reality is the terrorist threat is coming from the Muslim community, and however it is defined, it has to be monitored,” Mr King said.