Inventing-Terrorists-study

Hossain, a naturalized American citizen from Bangladesh, indicated that hehad no interest in missiles or terrorists, but he agreed to take the loan to fixup his rental properties.At this point, Malik and Hossain asked Aref to witness the loan. Thatwas Aref’s only act––to be a gratuitous witness for the loan––and the onlyrelevant question was whether Aref was given enough information byMalik to understand that the money for the loan came from an illegalsource, the sale of the (fake) missile. Any impartial reading of the recordwould indicate that Aref had no idea that anything illegal was going on; infact, Aref made statements to Malik indicating his support for America andagainst violence and terrorism.After the indictment was announced, the governor of New Yorkhysterically proclaimed to the media that “terrorists are living among us.”The FBI made absurd displays of security to intimidate the jury. The trialfeatured secret and presumably illegal surveillance material,mistranslations of foreign words and documents, and other tricks toconvince the jury that the two men were dangerous.The jury convicted Hossain of all his charges (twenty-seven countsof the indictment) but acquitted Aref of twenty of the thirty counts hefaced. Other than one minor charge, Aref’s convictions related to the lastconversation between Malik and Aref during the sting. This lastconversation was conducted using a code––the word “chaudry” meant“missile”––but there was no evidence introduced that Aref knew the codeword, and without knowing it Malik’s statements would not have meantanything illegal to him. Both men were sentenced to fifteen years.On appeal, the appellate court apparently concluded that theconviction could not be sustained based on the evidence of that lastB-6