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<h2><font face="arial" size=5><b>World Socialist Web Site
</font><a href="http://www.wsws.org/" eudora="autourl"><font face="arial" size=3>www.wsws.org<br><br>
<br>
</a></font>FBI’s Albany terror “sting” begins to unravel<br><br>
<br>
</b></h2><h5><b>By Bill Van Auken<br>
19 August 2004<br><br>
</b></h5><font size=3>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.<br><br>
The two menYassin M. Aref, 34, a Kurdish immigrant, and Mohammed
Mosharref Hossain, 49, a Bangladeshi immigrantwere 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.<br><br>
The conspiracy, however, was entirely an invention of the FBI. Using a
confidential informeranother immigrant promised leniency on a criminal
charge in return for cooperationthe 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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out-of-date telephone number.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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
“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 ‘brother,’ not ‘commander,’ as indicated in the
[Army] teletype.”<br><br>
Other Kurdish speakers have said that the word used in the
notation”kak” could also be translated as “mister.”<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Aref, who came to the US as a political refugee several years ago, has
many relatives still in Iraq, including three brothers.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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 <i>Times Union</i>: “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.”<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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 groupJamaat el-Islamiis a
political party with cabinet members in the Bangladeshi coalition
government.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
Now that the scheme is falling apart, the invocation of “national
security” is meant to hide this state conspiracy from the general
public.<br><br>
<div align="center"><b>A debacle for the government in Detroit terror
case<br><br>
</b></div>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
A man appearing in the videoa Tunisian immigrantwas 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.<br><br>
Justice Department officials have acknowledged that the man’s testimony
has led them to “reevaluate” the tape’s significance.<br><br>
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
2002along with another one made in 1997 and allegedly found with Al
Qaeda suspects in Spainbut 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.<br><br>
Las Vegas authorities have denied the charge, insisting that they did not
believe the tapes were indicative of a terrorist threat.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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