Witness: A Documentary

Join Proctors for a FREE screening and discussion of Witness: A Documentary.

Directed by Masood Haque, the film has at its center the Imam of an Albany mosque, Yassin Aref, who – along with pizza shop owner, Mohammed Hossain – finds himself the focus of an elaborate FBI sting. In a plea bargain, a convicted felon, Malik, is sent undercover by the FBI to entrap the young Imam. FBI’s strategy (according to those closest to the case): trick Yassin into becoming a witness for a convoluted money laundering scheme, and then tenuously connect this scheme to a fake terror plot. Mission accomplished: the FBI manufactures a terrorist and then solves its own “crime.”

“A decade-in-the-making, “Witness” is riveting and essential viewing, a taut mix of interviews, archival news footage and FBI audio and video recordings. It tells a tale that’s at once global and local, and does so with a rare, unforced intimacy, showing viewers the complicated individuals behind the headlines.” – Sara Foss, AlbanyProper.com

Witness touches on a host of contemporary issues, ranging from the War on Terror to the balance between civil liberties and security. Most importantly, it examines the idea of due process. The documentary also grapples with the idea of preemptive prosecutions, used against hundreds of Muslims as well as the role of media in becoming an arm of the government’s disinformation campaign.

The documentary will be followed by a Q&A discussion with:
Carl Strock: Moderator; Journalist who covered the case for the Daily Gazette
Masood Haque: Director of the documentary
Mohammed Hossain: one of the two Albany Muslims targeted by the FBI in 2003-2004 in a sting that involved his pizzeria business
Stephen Downs: attorney for Yassin Aref, the Albany imam who was the FBI’s real target and was convicted largely due to secret evidence that neither his lawyers nor the jury saw.

Co-sponsoring groups of this event:
Muslim Solidarity Committee, a support and activist group, was founded in 2006 immediately after the men’s convictions, and advocates for and supports Aref and Hossain and their families.

Project SALAM (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims), a national support group, founded in 2010 and based in Albany, which advocates for other Muslims and their families throughout the country who have been unjustly targeted and convicted in the “War on Terror.”

Coalition for Civil Freedoms, a survivor-led nonprofit organization, based in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to ending the abuses of the U.S. domestic “War on Terror.” Founded in 2010, CCF is a coalition of civil liberties and human rights organizations that challenge preemptive prosecution and the post-9/11 targeting, surveillance, and criminalization of Muslim communities.

Special thanks to Jeanne Finley for her assistance with organizing this event. Finley is one of the original members of the Muslim Solidarity Committee and Project SALAM, and will introduce the panel. Additionally, she edited and published Yassin Aref’s memoir, Son of Mountains: My Life as a Kurd and a Terror Suspect, and the late Dr. Shamshad Ahmad’s book about the Aref-Hossain case, Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Muslim Entrapment Since 9/11.