History will remember Albany terrorism sting as a witch hunt
First
published: Friday, January 12, 2007
Albany
Times Union
Someday we'll look back
on the present national paranoia over terrorism and the excesses done in its
name with the same national embarrassment that Americans feel for Sen. Joe
McCarthy's communist witch hunts of the 1950s and our appalling treatment of
Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Someday.
But
not anytime soon, and certainly not before Yassin M. Aref, the former imam at
an Albany mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, a pizza shop owner, are sentenced on
Feb. 12.
A
federal jury convicted the pair of a varying number of counts in an FBI money
laundering sting operation with terrorist overtones involving a phony missile
launcher. They each face 25 years in jail.
There
are motions before the court to throw out the conviction, but since the judge
tipped his pro-prosecution hand during the trial, they will come to naught. And
the inevitable appeal will stutter along. But given the dismal times for due
process in our vaunted system of justice, the chances of reason, of common
sense, prevailing over hysteria and hellbent ideology are slim.
History
will see these two as victims. Not innocents, but victims. Of this I am utterly
convinced. Small comfort for them, or their families. They have 10 children
between, all under the age of 13.
This
case should never have seen a courtroom. Because once the mesmerizing
ingredients were brought into a trial -- the convoluted and selective
translations, a glib informant avoiding 15 years in jail and the exploitation
of our fears and anxieties over global terrorism by prosecutors, -- the results
were predictable. The trial had remarkably little to do with Aref and Hossain.
This was not our federal court system's finest hour, or the FBI's, either.
From
the beginning, the feds knew better. Up front, the Justice Department in
Washington admitted that this case was not all that strong or the defendants
all that dangerous. But the FBI put a lot of resources and a lot of money, time
and ego into a complicated sting that took months and months and leaps of faith
to swallow. So the feds wanted a couple of scalps for all their efforts. They
got them.
But that still begs the question of
why the feds pursued this prosecution with such zealousness, even after
recognizing as they must have that Aref and Hossain never posed any threat to
our national security.
It seems there was an
ulterior motive, also reflective of our times. Sending a chilling message
through the American immigrant Muslim community.
Assistant
U.S. Attorney William Pericak, the lead prosecutor, told our reporter Brendan
Lyons after the trial, that he was convinced that if a real terrorist showed up
in Albany, "I am convinced they both would have helped him." Strange,
since there is not a shred of evidence to support that.
"It's not just these guys, it's
what happens tomorrow when a guy is somewhere and overhears someone talking
about an attack," Pericak said. "We want that person to call the FBI.
If they call the FBI because they're a good citizen that's great, but if they
call the FBI because they think this is a sting and they might get caught up in
it, that's OK, too."
Well,
according to the Muslim Solidarity Committee, a local support group for Aref
and Hossain, the government has been dazzlingly successful in spreading fear
and distrust in the local immigrant Muslim community. However, that would be a
fear of the FBI and our government.
Looking
up from a warm seat somewhere, Senator Joe must be viewing all this with a
knowing smile.
LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.com.