Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns, Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Ev

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Mon, 16 Jan 2006 05:43:00 -0800

Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns, Trial

Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence

 

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/15/AR2006011500940.\

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Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns

Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence

 

By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, January 16, 2006; A01

 

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

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