If it walks, looks, and quacks like a duck.it's a terrorist.
Bruce http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-localarian06070605jul06,0,2136 314.story?coll=orl-home-headlines Arabic translation may hold key to trial The Sami Al-Arian terrorism-related trial could hinge on varying interpretations of Arabic. By Pedro Ruz Gutierrez Sentinel Staff Writer July 6, 2005 For more than a year, two aging retirees met weekly in a quiet room on the fourth floor of Orlando's federal courthouse to review hundreds of hours of secretly taped conversations in Arabic. Both men, a chemist and an electrical engineer, grew up speaking Arabic in Palestine before the creation of Israel. They are now at the center of what the government calls the most significant terrorism-related trial since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Khaled Diab and Kamal Yunis, two Orlando-area court interpreters hired by the Federal Public Defender's office, have scrutinized the government's translations in the ongoing trial of fired University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian and three others in Tampa. Sometime in the next few months, Diab, 78, and Yunis, 72, are expected to testify about one of the more crucial issues in the trial: the significance of hundreds of Arabic-language documents and conversations culled during a decade-long wiretap investigation. According to court documents, the two Orlando linguists have offered "counter translations" and are listed as witnesses for Hatem Naji Fariz, a Spring Hill resident and former Chicago-area Muslim leader. Al-Arian, 47, Fariz, 32, Chicago businessman Ghassan Ballut, 43, and former USF instructor Sameeh Hammoudeh, 45, are on trial on charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, murder civilians in Israel and provide material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The four, along with five more defendants who are abroad, were indicted in February 2003 and are accused of using Islamic charities, a think tank and a school as cover to raise funds for the terror group. They could face up to life in prison, if convicted. In the tapes, federal prosecutors say, the defendants are heard praising terrorist attacks and directing wire transfers overseas. In opening statements a month ago, Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter "Terry" Furr said the defendants fomented terror through "economic jihad" -- a chain of murders and bombings with claims and publicity that were later exploited to gain financial support and recruit new suicide bombers. Of the more than 20,000 hours of conversations secretly taped by FBI intelligence agents from 1993 to 2003, fewer than 300 hours are deemed relevant to the case. In counterstatements, defense attorneys said the government's accounts often misidentified speakers, while some lacked context. In the coming months, both sides are expected to differ over idioms, syntax and other language nuances in Arabic. Misinterpretation possible Yunis is a former chemist who fled Kuwait and settled in Central Florida in 1992 after the Iraqi invasion about a year earlier. On Friday, he said he could not discuss specifics. But in general, he said, the wiretaps involve everyday conversations among family members and friends. "It was very tedious," he said of the 18-month-long project. Aziz Ismail, an Egyptian-born translator and interpreter based in Chicago, notes that Arabic is spoken in 22 countries between North Africa and the Persian Gulf -- a wide geographical area where dialects, accents and cultural differences abound. The chance for misinterpreting everyday interjections in Arabic when translated to English is great, Ismail says. For example, he says, references to the word for God, Allah, are commonly misinterpreted in terrorism investigations as something sinister. Ismail likens the use of Allah in Arabic conversations to common expressions in English such as "Oh, my God," "Holy cow" or "For Pete's sake." "When you put that in writing, it connotes ulterior motives," he said. To foreigners, "it's a jihad of some sort. But it's so innocuous." Ismail has served as a court-appointed linguist in several terrorism trials, including that of blind Egyptian cleric Ahmad Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for his role in a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Assistant Federal Public Defender Kevin Beck, Fariz's attorney, said the translation work by Diab and Yunis was "invaluable" and both may be called to testify when prosecutors introduce translations of phone calls or documents. "It's been hours and hours and hours of going over these conversations," Beck said of the translation, which was paid for in part through $450,000 allotted by the federal judicial district. "It was a tremendous undertaking . . . [The government translations] are generally very close. There are some areas where we are concerned. It's the nuances versus the verbiage." Diab, a retired electrical engineer and entrepreneur, and Yunis have been active at the Arab-American Community Center of Central Florida for years and are well-known in Palestinian-American circles. Several Central Florida ties The interpreters are not the only Orlando-area ties to the case. A review of documents shows K & K Travel and Tours, a now-defunct Orange County travel agency, and former University of Central Florida Professor Hussam Abujbara appear in the hundreds of exhibits filed by federal prosecutors. Abujbara, deported last year after being convicted of lying on immigration forms, was a co-founder of the Islamic Concern Project or Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), which prosecutors say was a cover for Al-Arian and his fund raising. K & K Travel was used by Al-Arian and other ICP staff to shuttle dozens of invited foreign guests and speakers to annual conferences hosted by another Al-Arian nonprofit -- the World and Islam Studies Enterprise -- between 1988 and 1992. Among them were the blind Egyptian sheik and others who were known or suspected terrorists. K & K Travel's founders, former Seminole County residents Monzer and Feryal El-Khaldi, are overseas and could not be reached for comment, according to their son. In addition to the travel agency and Abujbara, phone records and personal address books of Al-Arian and Fariz -- some dating to 1991 -- detail various contacts in Central Florida. Al-Arian's case is being closely watched for the precedents it may set in an era pitting the government's homeland security needs and the use of the controversial USA Patriot Act against civil liberties. It was that law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, that allowed the intelligence wiretaps of Al-Arian and the others to be used by FBI investigators and federal prosecutors in the criminal prosecution. Dr. Walid Phares, a Middle East expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, says the translations give defense attorneys a tool to attack the government's case. Because jurors typically are not educated in Arabic or Middle Eastern culture, they must rely on defense attorneys and their witnesses for an alternative to the government's account. "The jury cannot identify with the language," said Phares, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University and testified as an expert witness for the government in a Detroit terrorism case. "It's going to boil down to: Will the jury believe the experts and linguists of the prosecution or the defense?" All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
