Biography
Yassin Aref is a Kurdish Iraqi imam who came to the United States as a UN refugee in 1999. He was the imam of Masjid As-Salam in Albany, New York at the time of his arrest on August 5, 2004 in an FBI sting operation. The FBI informant Shahed Hussein, posing as an arms dealer, asked pizzeria owner Mohammed Mosharref Hossain to launder money allegedly from the sale of a surface-to-air missile to Jaish-e-Mohammed; Aref was brought in solely as a religious witness to the loan transaction, in accordance with Islamic law on financial agreements.
He was convicted in October 2006 of conspiracy and money-laundering charges and sentenced in March 2007 to 15 years in federal prison. The 2023 ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy that the FBI informant Shahed Hussein had been a villain whose testimony in unrelated cases warranted relief came too late for Aref, who had already completed his sentence. He was deported to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region after release.
A November 2019 Center for Constitutional Rights update reproduced in NYC ABC confirms that both Kifah Jayyousi and Yassin Aref were already released from prison. It says the district court allowed Jayyousi’s challenge to Communication Management Unit records to continue because expungement remained meaningful, while finding Aref’s claim moot after his removal from the United States. This was a procedural mootness ruling, not a decision establishing the merits of either challenge or a new custody episode. Source: https://nycabc.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/updates-12-nov-2019-1.pdf#page=8
CCR’s 2010 report describes Aref v. Holder, filed in March 2010, challenging isolation and family-contact restrictions in Communications Management Units. Jayyousi is individually identified in the report’s family-photo caption before his CMU transfer. This concerns historical conditions of an existing confinement, not a new admission, release or current prison address. Center for Constitutional Rights Annual Report2010, original PDF page 34. Source: https://ccrjustice.org/files/CCR_Annual_Report_2010.pdf#page=34
Aref’s March 29, 2010 CMU complaint reports transfer from Terre Haute to the Marion CMU on March 27, 2009, after 22 months at Terre Haute. It identifies sentencing Judge Thomas McAvoy and alleges that restrictions on contact visits and telephone calls harmed his family relationships. These are allegations in his civil complaint, not findings on the merits.
