|
Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns
Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
01/16/06 "Washington
Post" -- -- NEW YORK -- For three years
federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old
translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne
Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents
shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads
and every file on his computer.
This was their conclusion:
"Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist,"
prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments
to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this
year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes
in the use of violence."
Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of
supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March,
when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter
from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's
lawyer in Egypt.
In June 2000, Stewart released to a reporter a version of the
letter, which discussed a cease-fire between Islamic militants
and the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said that the lawyer
and the translator, by these acts, conspired to use Rahman's
words to incite others to carry out kidnappings and killings. No
attack took place.
"Kill who? What are they talking about?" Yousry asked recently
as he sat alongside his wife, Sarah, an evangelical Christian,
in their modest Connecticut condominium. "The words I'm looking
for, it's insane."
The prosecution and conviction of Stewart, 66, on charges of
aiding terrorist activity, drew international attention,
overshadowing Yousry's case. But legal experts, civil liberties
lawyers and a juror say Yousry's conviction raises many
troubling questions, not least how a court-appointed translator
working on instruction from lawyers could be held responsible
for navigating complicated and dangerous legal waters.
The trial transcripts reveal that prosecutors advanced no
evidence to back up certain claims, including the assertion that
Yousry was in touch with Middle Eastern terrorists.
"You would expect a translator to take his lead from the defense
lawyer and you would not expect that translator to understand
the intricacies of a very broad criminal statute," said Neal R.
Sonnett, a former federal prosecutor who chaired an American Bar
Association task force that opposed the Bush administration's
position on enemy combatants. "There is a real issue whether
it's even fair to charge, much less convict, someone like him."
Yousry had no legal training and translated nothing without
instruction from defense lawyers. He passed rigorous federal
security clearance checks. A PhD candidate at New York
University, Yousry harbored no affinity for Rahman, writing that
the cleric promoted "Muslim totalitarianism."
Justice Department prosecutors said secret recordings of
meetings in Rahman's prison showed that Yousry crossed the line
between legal and illegal behavior. Yousry read letters to
Rahman from radical supporters, even though he understood that
they were violent men.
"He stuck his head in the sand and deliberately avoided knowing
what would have been obvious," prosecutor Robin Baker told the
jury. "We don't need to prove why."
Yousry was tried alongside Stewart, who supports armed
revolution, and Ahmed Sattar, a Rahman aide and sympathizer with
fundamentalist causes, in Manhattan, five blocks from Ground
Zero. All three were convicted. Prosecutors played a videotape
of Osama bin Laden and mentioned al Qaeda attacks, even though
the case had nothing to do with that group.
A month after the trial, a female juror wrote to U.S. District
Judge John G. Koeltl, complaining that fellow jurors talked of
terrorist attacks and their desire to teach the defendants a
lesson. "They had an agenda," Juror 39 told The Washington Post
in her first interview. "People are so fearful that if you
disagree with the government on one thing it makes you a
terrorist.
"I have to plead guilty to being a coward," Juror 39, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity, said of her vote to convict. "It
doesn't feel good, but I punked out."
Out of Egypt
Yousry has round cheeks and curly hair, wears baggy sweaters and
jeans and has the aspect of an absent-minded professor. He's far
removed from a privileged upbringing in Egypt, where his father
was a military general, a physician and a supporter of President
Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Yousry came to New York City in 1980. He met Sarah, and they
married in a church. Their daughter graduated from a Baptist
college.
In 1995, Yousry's translation agency offered him a job with the
legal defense team for Rahman, a prominent Egyptian radical who
was accused of conspiring to blow up the United Nations building
and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. Yousry struck up a cordial
if fractious relationship with Rahman, who speaks little
English. "He liked to torture me about drinking and not praying
and all that good stuff," Yousry recalled.
In October 1995, Rahman was convicted and sentenced to life in
prison. Stewart and former attorney general Ramsey Clark, a
courtly Texan with decidedly left-wing politics, set about
trying to persuade the United States to transfer Rahman to an
Egyptian prison. They asked Yousry to return to the case in
1997.
Yousry declined -- he wanted to write his dissertation and
teach. His adviser, historian Zachary Lockman, suggested a
marriage of academics and work. "Knowing that he would have
access to the FBI tapes and to Rahman, I suggested a biography
of Rahman and his movement," Lockman said. "I guess I'm
responsible in a very sad way for the trouble he's in."
In April 1997, Attorney General Janet Reno imposed unprecedented
restrictions known as "special administrative measures" on
Rahman, denying him access to mail, newspapers and any visitor
except his wife and attorneys. Prosecutors argued that Rahman's
words were so dangerous that they constituted a weapon. Theirs
was not an idle worry: Egyptian militants had slaughtered 58
tourists in Luxor in 1997 in hopes of forcing Rahman's release.
Clark and Stewart signed the administrative measures.
Prosecutors did not demand the same of Yousry. The defense
attorneys repeatedly tested the regulations. Clark in 1997 told
reporters of Rahman's support for a cease-fire with the Egyptian
government without earning a rebuke from prosecutors.
Prosecutors argue that the translator should have balked when
the lawyers skirted the legal edge. This notion bemuses Clark.
"Mohammed would assume that the lawyers knew what they were
doing," he said in an interview.
Prison Meeting
By 2000, Stewart had taken the lead in Rahman's defense. A
grandmotherly Maoist, she was an accomplished trial lawyer who
eschewed Clark's diplomatic speech.
But Stewart did not realize that a year earlier Justice
Department lawyers -- under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act -- obtained permission to secretly videotape
visits to Rahman in his maximum-security prison in Rochester,
Minn. They also obtained wiretaps on Yousry and Sattar.
At the core of the government's case were two prison meetings
with Rahman in May 2000. On May 19, Yousry read a note to Rahman
from his radical followers, asking whether to maintain a
cease-fire with the Egyptian government. Rahman dictated a
response the next day. Contrary to prosecution claims,
government tapes show the cleric did not favor ending the
cease-fire.
"The militants," Rahman wrote to his attorney in Egypt, "should
not cancel it altogether."
Stewart chattered to distract the guards and joked with Yousry
that they could get in trouble. Prosecutors argued this was
proof of a "red-handed" conspiracy. Yousry denied involvement,
saying Stewart reveled in thumbing her nose at prosecutors.
On June 14, 2000, Stewart -- without Yousry's knowledge -- read
a statement about the cease-fire to a Reuters correspondent.
Misinterpreting Rahman's intent, she said he had withdrawn his
support for it.
If this was a conspiracy, it was a remarkably uncoordinated
affair. Four months later, Sattar, the postal clerk, released a
fatwa, or religious edict, in Rahman's name urging followers to
"kill Jews everywhere." Yousry, government tapes show, learned
of the fatwa days later while reading the newspaper to Rahman.
He immediately said he had to inform the lawyers.
"Mr. Yousry," Rahman snapped in a rare use of English, "this is
none of your business!"
Later government tapes reveal Yousry upbraiding Sattar when he
learned the postal clerk spoke to suspected terrorists after
militants bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. Yousry
became worried. "I asked Ramsey what I should do," he recalled.
"He told me: 'Listen to the lawyer and you'll be safe.' "
Indictment
A plume of black smoke rose from Ground Zero as four FBI agents
knocked on the door of Yousry's home in Queens two days after
Sept. 11, 2001. Yousry said little. Two more days passed, and he
thought better of his reticence. He called the agents back and
talked about Sattar and the USS Cole and Rahman. He met four
more times with FBI agents over six months.
In the spring of 2002, a federal prosecutor suggested Yousry
testify if the government indicted Stewart and Clark. This was
confirmed by a federal law enforcement source. "They wanted me
to entrap Lynne and Ramsey," Yousry said. "I said no."
On April 9, 2002, FBI agents and helmeted police officers with
high-powered rifles came to arrest Yousry while his friends and
neighbors peered behind cruisers and kitchen curtains. Stewart
had been arrested that morning.
The FBI ultimately recorded thousands of hours of Yousry's
telephone conversations and electronic activity over three
years, but prosecutors introduced none of those tapes into
evidence. Yousry never spoke to Rahman without the lawyers'
permission, even when left alone with him. Nor, transcripts
show, did the prosecutors offer evidence to back up assertions
that Yousry talked to militants in the Middle East.
Prosecutors argued that Yousry metaphorically closed his eyes to
the bad characters around him. They noted that he padded his
résumé and suggested that he addressed Rahman as "spiritual
master" to show allegiance; in fact, it's a common Arabic
honorific. Prosecutors speculated that Yousry betrayed the
nation in hopes of gaining a Harvard teaching position.
The jury began deliberations in early 2005 and conversation was
not friendly to the defendants. "A woman was in tears she was so
scared of terrorism," Juror 39 said. "Another kept asking why it
took Yousry so long to finish his dissertation, that it was
suspicious."
On Feb. 10, 2005, the jury foreman pronounced the defendants
guilty on all counts. Yousry went ashen; his daughter, Leslie,
dissolved in tears.
Afterward
Judge Koeltl recently rejected Yousry's legal appeal based on
the account of Juror 39. The judge noted that juries are given
great leeway. David Stern, Yousry's lawyer, cannot quite accept
that. "I'm in the habit of defending bad people, and they've
mostly done what they're accused of," he said. "This guy is
flat-out innocent, and it's disgraceful he's going to prison."
Michael Gasper, who studied with Yousry and teaches at Yale,
often visits the translator. The friends drink wine and laugh,
and when Gasper leaves, Yousry presses another favorite history
book into his guest's hands. The translator will have no use for
them in prison. "The way he has taken it makes me cry, he's so
gracious," Gasper said. "I try not to talk about it, but he
keeps giving me those . . . books."
Yousry talks of hope. "I awake every morning and think: I will
be vindicated," he said. "It just hasn't happened yet." But he
passes the days until sentencing in his book-lined study. He
figures it is the size of a prison cell and he wants to get used
to it.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
