Mohamed Yousry is an American interpreter and translator who was appointed by the court to assist in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1996 of plotting terrorist attacks against various sites in the New York City area.
On February 10, 2005, Yousry was indicted in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York,[1] along with attorney Lynne Stewart and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of conspiring to provide, and providing material support to terrorism and conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, and was convicted.
[5] Abdel Rahman was under special administrative measures, which attorney Stewart violated by releasing this letter to the public.
[2] Although these press reports state that there is no question that Stewart violated these special administrative measures, whether Yousry did so is much less clear.
[8] NAJIT later responded to these criticisms with a two-page letter detailing their broad reasons for failing to support Yousry, as well as listing specific examples of where they felt he deviated from just being a translator.