Mosque sting based on weak evidence, say prosecutors
By Our Correspondent
NEW YORK, Aug 18: The US government's case against two Muslim men arrested in a fake terror plot in Albany, New York, may be unravelling as federal prosecutors acknowledged on Tuesday that a crucial evidence against them might be flawed, the New York Times said on Wednesday.
Two leaders of Albany mosque, Yassin M. Aref, 34, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 49, were arrested after a year-long sting operation in which the authorities alleged the two men agreed to launder money to buy a shoulder fired missile to kill the Pakistani Ambassador to the United Nations.
Both men pleaded not guilty on August 10 and were ordered held without bail. If convicted, they might each face at least 20 years in prison. Aref, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq, might also face deportation.
The New York Times said the error concerned a possible incorrect translation with ominous implications for Aref. The prosecutors said the Defence Department gave them information that a notebook with Aref's name and address was found in what they called a terrorist training camp in the western Iraq desert, near Syria.
They said a word on one page, written in Arabic, referred to Aref as "commander". In fact, the word was Kurdish, and could be translated as "brother," according to the prosecutors.
Reviewing the page for the newspaper, Nijyar Shemdin, the US representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, said he did not see how a translation would have come up with the word commander.
He also said Aref was referred to with the common honorific "kak", which could mean brother or mister. Aref's lawyer, Terence Kindlon, told the newspaper the error was emblematic of deeper problems in the case.
"It looks to me to be a two-bit frame-up," Mr Kindlon said. "In 30 years of practising law, I have come to expect high standards from government prosecutors. This thing is just shabby. I suspect that there is something political driving this."
