FBI's Albany terror "sting" begins to unravel

World Socialist Web Site - August 19, 2004
http://www.wsws.org


FBI's Albany terror "sting" begins to unravel

By Bill Van Auken

The prosecution on terrorism charges of two Muslim immigrants in Albany, New
York, has begun to unravel with the revelation that the principal piece of
evidence used to justify their entrapment in an FBI sting operation was
falsified.

The two men -- Yassin M. Aref, 34, a Kurdish immigrant, and Mohammed
Mosharref Hossain, 49, a Bangladeshi immigrant -- were arrested in pre-dawn
raids on August 5. They have been charged with providing material support to
a foreign terrorist organization, importing firearms without a license,
money laundering and conspiracy.

The conspiracy, however, was entirely an invention of the FBI. Using a
confidential informer -- another immigrant promised leniency on a criminal
charge in return for cooperation -- the FBI reportedly drew the two
defendants into a fictitious scheme that involved the selling of a
shoulder-fired missile to someone plotting to assassinate the Pakistani
ambassador to the United Nations.

Hossain had approached the FBI informant earlier, asking for a loan to bail
out his business, a pizza shop. It was then that the FBI set the sting into
motion, inventing the story about the sale of the weapon and having the
informant ask Hossain to hold the proceeds in return for a portion of the
money. The only alleged role played by Aref, the spiritual leader at an
Albany mosque, was to serve as a witness to the financial transaction.

The key evidence used in FBI affidavits seeking the search warrants that
allowed the sting to go forward was a notebook said to have been recovered
by the US military at a "terrorist training camp" in Iraq. It was claimed
that the notebook included Aref's name, together with an out-of-date
telephone number. The FBI said the notation, written in Kurdish, referred to
Aref as "commander." This suggested, according to the FBI, that Aref was
associated with Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist movement
alleged to have connections with Al Qaeda.

Earlier this week, however, federal prosecutors were compelled to admit that
this evidence, like the plot itself, was fabricated. In a letter sent to
Judge David Homer on Monday, the US Attorney's office acknowledged its
"error."

"After obtaining a copy of the original entry late yesterday," the
prosecution wrote, "FBI translators who reviewed it concluded that the
Kurdish-language word that precedes Aref's name in the second-to-last line
of the entry is =91brother,' not =91commander,' as indicated in the [Army]
teletype."

Other Kurdish speakers have said that the word used in the notation -- "kak"
-- could also be translated as "mister."

In a bail hearing last week, Judge Homer refused to release the two men,
citing, in particular, the use of the word "commander" in the notebook. "If
true," the judge said, "that evidence carries significant weight to Mr.
Aref's ties to terrorist activities."

Lawyers for the two men said that a new bail hearing has been set for next
week, based on the debunking of the prosecution's claim.

Equally spurious is the prosecution's claim that the US Army found the
notebook following an attack on a "terrorist camp" in Rawah, Iraq, near the
Syrian border, in June 2003. Using helicopter gunships and tanks, the US
attackers slaughtered approximately 80 people. Some of those killed were
said to have come to Iraq from Syria and other neighboring countries on the
eve of the war to resist the US invasion. No proof was ever offered by the
military that those killed were linked to Ansar al-Islam, Al Qaeda or any
other terrorist network.

Following the attack on Rawah, the US military conducted extensive raids in
the town itself, rounding up hundreds of people and ransacking homes. Yet no
evidence has been presented on precisely where the notebook was found,
whether it was on the person of one of those killed, or in one of the many
houses that were searched.

Aref, who came to the US as a political refugee several years ago, has many
relatives still in Iraq, including three brothers.

After the exposure of the government's phony claim concerning the notebook,
the Justice Department filed a motion Tuesday invoking the Classified
Information Procedures Act, a little-used government secrecy law, claiming
that disclosure of further evidence against the defendants could jeopardize
"national security." The law allows prosecutors to withhold evidence from
defense attorneys and the court, submitting merely a summary of what the
evidence allegedly shows.

Attorneys for the two Muslim immigrants responded angrily to the
government's motion. "It's kind of shocking," said Terence Kindlon, who is
representing Aref. He told the Albany Times Union: "They had three press
conferences announcing the arrests, one in Washington, D.C., and two in
Albany. They put out all this prejudicial damaging information, much of
which turns out to be based upon demonstrably false information, and now
they want to shut everything down so we can't respond."

As for the government's claim that it made a "mistake" in claiming that the
notebook referred to his client as "commander," Kindlon remarked, "This is
the point where the whole thing starts to sound like a two-bit frame-up."

The government has presented no other evidence tying the two defendants to
terrorism. Reportedly, federal prosecutors included the claim in their
affidavits for search warrants that Hossain had voiced support for an
Islamic extremist group. However, the group -- Jamaat el-Islami -- is a
political party with cabinet members in the Bangladeshi coalition
government.

In addition to invoking the state secrecy law, the government has filed a
motion to push back deadlines for trial proceedings, indicating that it has
yet to translate evidence from a year's worth of surveillance tapes. This
includes discussions between the defendants and the informant in both Arabic
and Urdu. Apparently, Aref does not even understand the latter language.

There is every indication that the case in Albany is a politically inspired
frame-up, timed to coincide with the Bush administration's ratcheting up of
terrorist alerts. That no terrorist conspiracy existed besides the one
invented by the FBI itself was largely obscured in the government's
trumpeting of another success in the "war on terror."

Now that the scheme is falling apart, the invocation of "national security"
is meant to hide this state conspiracy from the general public.

A debacle for the government in Detroit terror case

The exposure of the fabricated evidence in the Albany case coincides with
the disintegration of the government's single successful post-September 11
conviction at trial of defendants accused of terrorist-related offenses.

The case involved government claims that four Arab immigrants arrested in
the Detroit, Michigan, suburb of Dearborn were part of an Islamic
fundamentalist "sleeper cell" that was prepared to carry out terrorist
attacks. Two of the four men were convicted on charges of providing material
support to terrorism and fraud. Both of the other two men were acquitted on
the terrorism charges, while one of them was convicted of fraud for
possessing false documents.

The case, hailed by the Bush administration at the time as its greatest
triumph in the war on terror, has turned into a complete debacle for the
government.

US District Judge Gerald Rosen in Detroit is threatening to throw out the
convictions of Karim Koubriti, 25, and Adel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38, because of
the prosecution's withholding from the defense of crucial evidence that
would almost certainly have led to a verdict of not guilty on the terrorism
charges.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, has relieved the chief prosecutor in the
case, Assistant US Attorney Richard Convertino, and is conducting a criminal
investigation against him on charges of prosecutorial misconduct.

For his part, Convertino has filed his own lawsuit against the Justice
Department and Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging them with "gross
mismanagement" of anti-terrorist cases and with launching the probe against
him in retaliation for critical testimony he gave to a Senate committee. He
further accuses the Justice Department of illegally leaking information
related to the case, including the identity of a key informant.

The exculpatory evidence withheld by the prosecution undercuts virtually
every aspect of its case. The key prosecution witness, Youssef Hmimmsa,
testified that he was asked to join the supposed terrorist cell and told of
plots to target airliners with Stinger missiles. In return for this
testimony, he received a drastically reduced sentence on a 10-count felony
indictment involving credit card fraud and other offenses.

One of the documents withheld from the defense was a letter from Milton
"Butch" Jones, a convicted drug gang leader who was imprisoned with Hmimmsa.
While the two were in jail, Jones said, Hmimmsa told him that he had made up
the story about the terror cell.

A videotape presented as a key piece of evidence in the prosecution case has
also been thoroughly discredited. The FBI portrayed the tape as evidence of
surveillance of sites targeted for terrorist attacks. The scenes on the tape
included casinos in Las Vegas, Disneyland and other tourist destinations.

A man appearing in the video -- a Tunisian immigrant -- was interviewed by
the government in January, months after the Detroit trial ended, and
established that the tape just what it seemed, an amateur film made during a
school trip.

Justice Department officials have acknowledged that the man's testimony has
led them to "reevaluate" the tape's significance.

The tape was made public after Convertino violated a federal court gag order
on the case by giving an interview to the Associated Press. It has been
shown repeatedly on national television, with newscasters echoing
Convertino's charge that Las Vegas authorities were shown the tape in 2002
-- along with another one made in 1997 and allegedly found with Al Qaeda
suspects in Spain -- but refused to announce a terror alert. Convertino
charged that city officials suppressed news of the tapes out of concern for
the potential economic impact of a terror alert.

Las Vegas authorities have denied the charge, insisting that they did not
believe the tapes were indicative of a terrorist threat.

Largely lost in the media's coverage of the controversy is the fact that the
government had already concluded the tape records were nothing more than a
tourist's travels, and that the case in which it featured as evidence is
being exposed as a frame-up.

Instead, the grainy images of Las Vegas have been broadcast over and over
again to suggest that there was a terrorist threat, where none existed, and
to question why the public was not warned.


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