Take this scenario: NYU grad student works as a translator. He is hired by a local attorney, and translates numerous conversations between her and her client. While doing so, he does research for his graduate dissertation. She breaks a court order, and releases a statement from her client to the public; the translator was never asked to agree to the order that the lawyer was bound by. The lawyer gets in trouble for breaking the order, and gets a slap-on-the-wrist punishment. The issue, we think, is settled.
A few years later, the Department of Justice re-opens the case, and decides to punish the lawyer again — only this time, they prosecute her on terrorism charges. They additionally decide to prosecute her translator for aiding and abetting terrorism, simply because he did his job and translated the conversations between the lawyer and her client.
Sounds implausible? It isn’t.
Mohammed’s diligence as a translator and an academic researcher would cost him dearly. In April 2002, he was arrested, along with Stewart and one of her paralegals. They were accused of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Two years earlier, Stewart had told a reporter that the imprisoned Abdel Rahman opposed a cease-fire that his supporters had negotiated with the Egyptian government. Though no act of violence ever resulted, the U.S. government claimed that Stewart had not only violated government regulations — which she had agreed to follow — restricting communications with Rahman but that she had also abetted terrorism.
Whatever Stewart may have done, however, it is hard to see how Mohammed can be held responsible for her actions. As a government-approved translator, he was never even asked to agree to the regulations Stewart was accused of violating, and he had no reason to question the lawfulness of his employer’s instructions. During the trial, prosecutors made contradictory arguments. They insinuated that Mohammed had knowingly broken the law in order to further his scholarly research, and even that he was an acolyte of Abdel Rahman. But they also acknowledged that Mohammed had never advocated violence or Islamic fundamentalism. My guess is that the real reason they went after Mohammed was to get Stewart: She knew no Arabic, and Abdel Rahman knew very little English, so without including Mohammed in the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors wouldn’t have had much of a case.
Mohammed, shellshocked by what has happened to him, faces sentencing in March, though appeals will surely follow. Many lawyers have rallied to Stewart’s defense because they believe that the government targeted her in order to deter other lawyers from zealously defending clients accused of terrorism, and because they feel that her case raises serious constitutional issues. Mohammed’s prosecution raises somewhat different, though equally disturbing, questions. Should a translator be sent to prison for following his employer’s instructions, especially when the prosecution failed to prove that he intended to break any law? Can a graduate student’s dissertation research reasonably be construed as contributing to a conspiracy to help terrorists?
Read the whole thing. This is outrageous.