Former CUNY Adjunct Sentenced
By Jordan E. Kurland
The long-delayed sentencing of convicted former part-time City University of New York lecturer Mohamed Yousry occurred on October 16. Yousry, a professional Arabic-English translator who taught part time for nine years at CUNY’s York College, was arrested in April 2002 on charges of “assisting a terrorist organization” through activity as translator for attorney Lynne Stewart, who was representing the imprisoned Sheik Abdel Rahman. Although Yousry was released on bond, the CUNY administration summarily suspended him and denied him any further appointment. (A report on the AAUP’s investigation of the case appears in the November–December 2004 issue of Academe.)
A February 2005 U.S. district court trial ended with the jury finding Stewart and Yousry guilty, but appeals following sentencing were fully expected. The CUNY administration assured the AAUP that should Yousry eventually be acquitted of the charges against him, it would comply with a York College recommendation to reinstate him to the faculty.
The sentencing encountered a series of delays, not least among them owing to the surgery and subsequent treatment that Stewart had to undergo for breast cancer. Once a date was finally set, the government prosecutors asked for a sentence of thirty years for the sixty-seven-year-old Stewart and twenty years for the fifty-one-year-old Yousry—even though they acknowledged that he was not a fundamentalist Muslim and did not support or believe in violence.
The judge, however, handed down a sentence of only twenty-eight months for Stewart and twenty months for Yousry. He also allowed both to remain free on bond while their appeals run their course (Yousry’s attorneys say they expect his to take two or three years). Moreover, should the appeals end with the convictions allowed to stand, the judge’s order specified that there be no solitary confinement or special limitations on communicating with outsiders or having visitors.
“I am happy with how it went,” says Yousry. “It was a turnabout in the government’s dealing with my situation. I can only hope that it’s a start toward full vindication.”
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