What about all the people Yassin Aref taught at the Masjid As-Salam? What are they doing now?
“Prosecutors portrayed Aref as a religious fanatic. But Manley and others believe Aref’s arrest was a case of entrapment.”
How absurd. Could you be entrapped into plotting mass murder? No? Neither could I. Claims of entrapment are simply an attempt to deflect attention away from the grim reality that some Islamic texts and teachings provide ample justification for committing treason and mass murder. No one could be entrapped into plotting such things unless his beliefs already led him in that direction.
“Albany mosque imam convicted of terrorism in sting deported,” by Mallory Moench, Times Union, June 10, 2019:
Yassin Aref, an imam at an Albany mosque convicted of terrorism in a post-9/11 FBI sting, was deported Sunday night, his son and lawyer said.
Aref, who is Kurdish, will return to Iraq after 13 1/2 years in federal prison and eight months in immigration detention in Pennsylvania.
His son Salah Muhiddin said he received a call from his father around 3:45 p.m. Sunday telling him that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Aref to pack up his belongings and prepare to leave. A little later, the messaging system that he uses stopped working and ICE’s detainee locator stopped listing him as a detainee.
Muhiddin was expecting a call anytime Sunday evening to confirm Aref was at the airport.
“If everything goes smoothly, he should be back in his home country as a free man tomorrow,” Muhiddin said.
Aref’s long-term lawyer Kathy Manley said at a hearing in federal court arguing for Aref’s release last Friday, ICE said Aref would be deported soon.
“We were asking for him to be released because we didn’t know when he was actually going to go. They said you don’t need to do that, he’ll be deported next week,” Manley said.
Aref, who was imam at Masjid As-Salam on Central Ave., was convicted in October 2006 by a federal jury in Albany of conspiring to aid a terrorist group with Central Avenue pizza shop owner Mohammad Hossain, an immigrant from Bangladesh. Their 2004 arrest was based on recorded information gathered during an FBI counter-terrorism sting involving money laundering to purchase a shoulder-fired rocket launcher.
Prosecutors portrayed Aref as a religious fanatic. But Manley and others believe Aref’s arrest was a case of entrapment….