Mohamed Yousry

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Mohamed Yousry (whose name is often misspelled as Mohammed Yousry) is an interpreter and translator who was appointed by the court to assist in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1996 of plotting terrorist attacks against various sites in the New York City area. On February 10, 2005 Yousry was indicted in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, along with attorney Lynne Stewart and Ahmed Abdel Sattar, of conspiring to provide, and providing, material support to terrorism and conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, and was convicted. According to an article in The Nation, Yousry was originally scheduled to be sentenced in September 2006, but he was actually sentenced on Monday, October 16, 2006 to one year and eight months, as reported by CNN in an article that has disappeared from their archives, but which can still be read in the version cached by Google. The sentencing was also reported on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 by the New York Times. (The sentencing information for Yousry does not appear in the abstract under this URL, but does appear in the full article.) On October 16, 2006, the New York Times reported that he was free on bail. Yousry filed at least one appeal, which was rejected, but there are more recent reports of other appeals.

A report by the Washington Post stated that what Yousry did was to translate a letter from Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman that Stewart later released to a reporter. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman was under Special Administrative Measures, which attorney Stewart did in fact violate by releasing this letter to the public, as reported by The Nation. Although these press reports state that there is no question that Stewart violated these Special Administrative Measures, whether Yousry did so is much less clear. The question of whether Yousry was guilty is explored in a New York Times article

The American Translators Association (ATA) and the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators(NAJIT) issued a joint statement about this case, which took a neutral stand about Yousry's guilt or innocence. This statement and its position have been the object of criticism by some members of the translation and interpreting profession (see page 6).

The case of Mohamed Yousry has attracted less interest than that of Lynne Stewart, but in many ways is more significant, since he was a court-appointed interpreter and translator following the lead of a court-appointed attorney, and his only "crime" was to translate a letter as part of his duties.