NEW YORK, Aug 11: A US federal judge denied bail on Tuesday to two Muslim men indicted in a fake sting FBI operation to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat.

The two men, Yassin M. Aref, 34, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 49, were recorded and videotaped by a government informer who told the two men that he was a terrorist and prodded them to launder money for a shoulder-fired missile that would be used in the attack at the Pakistan mission to the United Nations.

Defence lawyers for the two men argued that the government scheme amounted to entrapment. However, Judge David R. Homer observed that the threat of terrorism caused him to view the case in a different light and that the failure of the men to turn away from the plot made them a danger to the community.

He said he was also troubled by the government's claim that Aref's name and Albany address had been found by US soldiers when they raided a camp in northern Iraq run by the militant group Ansar al-Islam. Aref is referred to as the "commander" in the notebook found, according to prosecutors, who did not provide the Arabic word used.

Aref's lawyer, Terence L. Kindlon, told the New York Times in an interview he had not been provided a copy of the page from the notebook. "All you can do is stand there and flap your arms," he said after the hearing, obviously frustrated.

Several Arabic speakers at the courthouse noted that "commander" could easily be a mistranslation of something more innocuous. In the courtroom, Mr Kindlon presented his client as a loving father of three young children who was "sensitive, intelligent and philosophical."

Mr Kindlon said the entire case was based on government fabrication. "The facts of this case exist in the imagination of the government," he said. The 19-count indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, relies heavily on evidence gathered by an informer who worked for the FBI.

The informer, reportedly a convict trying to make a deal with the government for a lighter sentence, had worked with investigators in previous cases, met Mr Hossain after he presented himself as someone who could secure false documents.

Hossain, a naturalized American citizen from Bangladesh, was seeking a driver's license for his "retarded" brother, according to his lawyer, Kevin A. Luibrand.

In later meetings, the informer laid out the details of a plot - invented by the government - that entailed the purchase of a Chinese-made surface-to-air missile that was going to be used in an attack on the Pakistani mission to the United Nations in New York. Pakistan has protested the FBI's tactics used in the sting operation, saying they had put the Pakistan's ambassador's life at risk.