Translator faces jail for "aiding terrorism" posted by bat020

Mohamed Yousry has worked for almost 10 years as an Arabic translator for a New York defence lawyer, Lynne Stewart. He was born in Egypt but is now a naturalised American citizen, having lived in the country for 30 years. He is not an Islamist radical - in fact he isn't even a practising Muslim.

But now he faces up to 20 years in jail. Why? Because he worked on the defence team of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the cleric convicted for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing). That was enough to get him convicted of "providing material aid to terrorism".

Read the full story in the New York Times