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.
[1] 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.
[2] 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".
[7] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed that Aref is tied to Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam.
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.
[9] 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.
The government eventually arrested both men, claiming that Aref chose to support money laundering by witnessing the loan.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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 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.
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.
On April 5, 2010, the Albany, NY Common Council passed a resolution asking DOJ to act on the Inspector General's Report and re-examine the Aref case as well as others.
In December 2005, The New York Times revealed that President Bush had taken the controversial step of secretly authorizing the NSA to expand its surveillance to within the US.
"The evidence sufficed for a jury to conclude that Aref [and Hossain] intended to aid in preparing a missile attack on American soil.
Aref traverses the landscape of his childhood in Iraqi Kurdistan under Saddam; details the decision to leave Kurdistan for Syria, where he and his wife and children, although poor, make a new life, and then as UN refugees come to the United States; describes his brief residence in America as an immigrant and imam at a small mosque before his arrest, prosecution, and conviction in the "terror case"; and records his experiences over 18 months at the Rensselaer County Jail.