Key Evidence Cast in Doubt on a Claim of Terrorism
By MARC SANTORA
Published: August 18, 2004
Federal prosecutors acknowledged possible flaws yesterday in a major piece of evidence used in their case against two leaders of an Albany mosque on charges that they supported terrorism.
The two men, Yassin M. Aref, 34, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 49, were arrested after a yearlong sting operation in which they were led to believe that a government informer was really a terrorist who wanted them to launder money from the sale of a shoulder-fired missile that would be used in an attack on a Pakistani diplomat in New York City.
...
Nijyar Shemdin, the United States representative for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington, reviewed a copy of the page at the request of The New York Times and said he did not see how a translation would have come up with the word "commander."
Mr. Shemdin said that Mr. Aref is referred to with the common honorific, "kak," which could mean brother or mister, depending on the level of formality.
...
(regarding the rest of the entrapment case):
However, many of the conversations between the informant and the men were in Urdu, as well as in Arabic and English, and Mr. Kindlon said there might be problems with the translations of those meetings, as well.
In court documents, the government provided only snippets of the conversations already translated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/nyregion/18missile.html-----------
Also looked up Rawah, where the 'notebook' came from according to the above article. There's been several attacks by the US there, as recently as last week. Huge slaughters. It's West of Baghdad, close to Syria. So the US says these attacks are on foreign fighters coming over, which may well be true sometimes. But it is also people doing trade and shepherds, etc. Here's one attack in June:
June 14, 2003, 12:03AM
Mysterious camp in Iraq wiped out by U.S. forces
By DAVID ROHDE
New York Times
RAWAH, Iraq -- The men arrived in this barren corner of western Iraq only two days ago, local residents said. Attracting little attention at first, they pitched tents on an isolated stream bed five miles from this ancient Euphrates River farming town.
Residents said the men were shepherds armed with rifles for protection. U.S. officials said they were terrorists running a training camp for Iraqis and foreigners eager to kill Americans.
Whoever they were, many of them died early Thursday morning as bombs and missiles fired by U.S. planes, helicopters and armored vehicles obliterated their encampment. Dozens of bloodstained blankets and mattresses, a charred truck and the scent of corpses were all that was left of the encampment Friday night.
....
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/1952280Knight-Ridder version of same event:
Published on Friday, June 13, 2003 by Knight-Ridder
U.S. Attack Threatens to Create Thousands of New Iraqi Enemies
by Tom Lasseter and Drew Brown
RAWAH, Iraq - Hassan Ibrahim walked the narrow space between the fresh graves and shook his head. There were 78, some of them packed with more than one body, with rocks as markers. The air stank of death. The names of the dead were written on paper and folded into soda bottles stuck in the ground.
"This town was safe before the Americans come here and made a lot of blood," said Ibrahim. "Is this the democracy they were talking about?"
The graves were all that remained after U.S. forces struck a suspected terrorist training camp five and a half miles from town Thursday, raking the earth with missiles and machine-gun fire.
...
Speaking to Pentagon reporters in a teleconference on Friday, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the top allied commander in Iraq, declined to say much about the Rawah raid. He did not say who the suspected terrorists were.
"I will simply tell you that it was a camp area that was confirmed with bad guys and specifically who the bad guys are will be determined as we exploit the site," he said.
....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0613-07.htmMy point is they had another motive for showing these Imams in Albany are somehow connected to terror, to justify these attacks they can't explain in Iraq. Bunch of guys in tents in the desert, blow them up, ask questions later--SOP.
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