Yassin Aref is poet, writer, and religious scholar of Kurdish background who was the central figure of a controversial sting operation leading to years of incarceration in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. A resident of Albany, New York, Aref was arrested by Federal authorities in August 2004 as part of a sting operation, convicted in October 2006 of conspiracy and money laundering charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2007. The sting operation revolved around FBI informant Shahed Hussein, who later became notorious for his involvement in other controversial cases of entrapment as well as the Schoarie Limousine crash. In 2023, a federal judge ordered the release of 3 other defendants who were also entrapped in a separate sting by Shahed Hussein, saying that FBI had used a "villain” of an informant, and that "the real lead conspirator was the United States". Aref's case drew criticism from human rights groups such as the ACLU and the NYCLU . In July 2008, an appellate court upheld the convictions, rejecting all of the defense's arguments. The decision caused outrage amongst the local community, as supporters maintained the position that he was being persecuted. Aref completed his 15-year prison sentence in October, 2018 and was deported to Iraqi Kurdistan in June, 2019.
Aref wrote a memoir, Son of Mountains: My Life as a Kurd and a Terror Suspect (2008).
Background US forces found Aref's name, address, and phone number in a notebook in a bombed-out Iraqi encampment in 2003.Suspects raise domestic spy issue: 2 Albany Muslim men accused in FBI sting seek information, Times Union, January 5, 2006 The information was classified, and the defense, despite defense counsel having received security clearances, was provided with almost no information about the notebook.
Originally the government claimed that the notebook entry said "commander" next to Aref's name; however, when the judge asked the government to provide the notebook page, the government admitted that there had been a "mistranslation" and the word in question was "kak," which means "brother," not "commander," and is a common Kurdish term of respect.Error In Albany 'Terror' Case Terror Camp Document Said Defendant Was 'Brother,' Not 'Commander', CBS News, August 18, 2004 Aref is from (Iraqi Kurdistan), and his grandfather was a famous imam; Aref was already known and respected in the area.
There was no way to know what group was bombed by US forces at the encampment; at times, groups such as the Kurdistan Justice Group, run by Ali Bapir, were bombed by the US, even though they did not oppose US forces.Kurd chief who taught mercy to Saddam's men, Guardian Unlimited, May 27, 2005
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed that Aref is tied to Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam.Terror suspect wants own trial: Albany pizza shop owner says case against imam hurts his chance with jurors, Times Union, December 10, 2005 When Aref left Iraq as a refugee in 1994, he lived in Syria for 5 years. During that time he was approved by the UN as a refugee to be sent to a third country, which ended up being the US. While in Syria, Aref worked first as a gardener for a rich businessman, and then for the Damascus Office of the IMK (Islamic Movement in Kurdistan), an Islamic Kurdish group which had worked with the US to oppose Saddam Hussein, and which helped Kurdish refugees in Syria. IMK was never claimed to be a terrorist organization. Mullah Krekar was an IMK official who, at the end of 2001, two years after Aref had left Syria and the IMK job, split from IMK to form Ansar al Islam, which is a designated terrorist organization. While Aref had met Krekar briefly a couple of times through his IMK job, he did not really know him, and was opposed to his extremist politics.
Aref came to the US as a United Nations refugee in 1999 with his wife and three young children. He initially found work as a janitor at a local hospital and as an ambulance driver. After a year he was hired as the imam of the Masjid As Salam Mosque.
Sting operation
Based perhaps on the discovery of the notebook in Iraq in 2003, the FBI launched a sting operation targeting Aref. FBI agents convinced a Pakistani informant (who was facing a long prison sentence and deportation for fraud) to approach a friend of Aref's, Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, as a means of getting to Aref.Mosque welcomed in informant , Times Union August 8, 2004
The FBI plan was that the informant, Shahed Hussein, would offer to loan $50,000 cash to Hossain, and get back $45,000 in checks from Hossain's business (a pizza shop), telling him that the money was made from buying a Chinese surface-to-air missile, which was to be provided to a group called JEM (Jaish-e-Mohammed), which was to use it to attack the Pakistani Ambassador in New York City. However, none of that was true.
Needing a witness to the loan, as is obligatory for Muslims, the men then brought Aref into the arrangement, solely as a witness to the loan transactions. The government eventually arrested both men, claiming that Aref chose to support money laundering by witnessing the loan. The defense argued that Aref, who spoke very poor English at the time, did not understand that this was anything other than a legitimate loan. Defense attorneys claimed that both Aref and Hossain were unfairly convicted–that Hossain was entrapped, and that Aref did not realize any laws were being broken.
Pakistan protested the sting having been based on a fictional plot to assassinate the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations.From one blunder to the next, Asia Times, August 11, 2004
Shahed Hussein
The informant, Shahed Hussein, went on to target people in at least two other cases (and appeared unknowingly in two documentaries), was paid over $100,000 by the FBI, and then started a limousine business which ignored safety regulations and caused an accident which killed 20 people in 2018.
Hussein targeted James Cromitie in the Newburgh 4 sting case, where he promised Cromitie $250,000 when he became uninterested in the plot. The case was the subject of a 2014 HBO documentary called The Newburgh Sting. The prosecution admitted that Hussein lied on the stand during the trial, and the judge later wrote to prosecutors (see page 7 of the link) recommending they investigate, but that never occurred.
In 2012, Hussein was brought in to join an FBI sting operation in Pittsburgh, targeting Khalifah Al-Akili. As documented in the award-winning documentary, (T)error (available on Netflix) Al-Akili realized Hussain was an FBI informant and blew the whistle on the sting. Al-Akili still got an eight-year sentence on an un-related gun charge, and was interviewed by Democracy Now in prison in 2015, before his release in 2018.
In October, 2018, the brakes on one of Hussein's limousines completely failed, killing 20 people in the worst US transportation disaster since 2009. Hussein had left the country shortly before, leaving his son, Nauman, to run it in his absence. As of September, 2019, Nauman Hussein is facing 20 homicide counts while his father, Shahed Hussain, has not returned to the US.
Trial
The trial occurred in September and October 2006. Hossain was convicted of all the counts, and Aref was convicted of 10 of the 30 counts, of conspiring to aid a terrorist group and provide support for a weapon of mass destruction, as well as money-laundering and supporting a foreign terrorist organization, Jaish-e-Mohammed, a group in Pakistan that the informant told the men he supported.
Both men filed appeals. The Aref defense attorneys argued on appeal that there was insufficient evidence, and that this was shown by the fact that Aref was acquitted of all the counts based on the most significant of the recorded conversations with the informant-the two conversations underlying the counts on which he was convicted provided him with no new information.
On March 8, 2007, both Aref and Hossain were sentenced to 15 years in prison–half the sentence called for under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Aref's defense counsel filed a lengthy sentencing memorandum which described Aref's background and the support shown for him in the community.United States of America v. Yassin Aref, Sentencing Memorandum, January 29, 2007 Aref professed innocence before his sentencing, and criticized the government's treatment of Muslims.United States of America v. Yassin Aref, Court Transcript, March 8, 2007 After sentencing, Aref was taken to the Communication Management Unit (CMU) at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was assigned BOP# 12778–052.
The Times Union ( ) and the Daily Gazette (), Albany's two main daily newspapers, both ran editorials at the time of the sentencing asking for extreme leniency, the Times Union on March 8 and 9 and the Gazette on March 9.
In addition, Times Union columnist Fred LeBrun, who had followed the trial closely, wrote, prior to the sentencing,
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 ... Looking up from a warm seat somewhere, Senator Joe must be viewing all this with a knowing smile.History will remember Albany terrorism sting as a witch hunt, Times Union, January 12, 2007
Carl Strock, the columnist for the Gazette, wrote many columns attacking the process as extremely unfair.The View from Here, Daily Gazette, February 4, 2007
The FBI responded by contacting the editorial boards of the Times Union and the Gazette and running an op-ed piece in the Gazette upholding the sting operation as legitimate.
Muslim Solidarity Committee
After the convictions, the Muslim Solidarity Committee (MSC)Muslim Solidarity Committee was formed to support Aref, Hossain, and their families. It generated over 50 letters, and nearly 1,000 signatures on a petition, to the judge in support of leniency,Summary of Letters in Support of Yassin Aref and raised over $30,000 to support the two families. Its founders won an award from the NYCLUNYCLU Annual Awards Ceremony , November 8, 2007 in November 2007.
In 2008, supporters formed another group, Project Salam, which started studying other Muslim “terrorism” convictions, and advocating for others they believed had been treated unfairly. In 2010, Project Salam joined with other groups to form the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) (later shortened to the Coalition for Civil Freedoms [CCF]) which does essentially the same thing, on a larger scale. In 2018, members of Project Salam recorded a podcast, Terror Talk in which they discussed the Aref/Hossain case and the larger context over several episodes.
Appeal
Aref's appeal, along with that of Hossain, was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on July 2, 2008. A petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court was denied on March 9, 2009.
As reported on the front page of The New York Times on August 26, 2007, the Aref appeal could have been an important test case for the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, as it appeared to be the only criminal case where there was strong evidence that the program was used to target a defendantSpying Program May Be Tested By Terror Case, August 26, 2007 Both the ACLU and the NYCLU got involved in the case.
However, in its opinion, the Second Circuit held that Aref had no right to know about this because it was classified. In an accompanying summary order, the court also sidestepped the issue by claiming that Aref hadn't shown a “colorable basis” for asserted he had been wiretapped under the NSA program.