FBI agent details how informant was used to build case against Albany mosque leader, pizza shop owner

By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Senior writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Friday, September 15, 2006

ALBANY -- Mohammed Hossain was working at his Central Avenue pizza shop three years ago when the FBI made their play for him.

Until then, by all accounts, the Bangladeshi immigrant had committed no crimes, paid his taxes, worked numerous jobs and saved enough money to buy a couple of rundown houses in Albany that he fixed up and rented for income.


The sting began that day, in July 2003, when Special Agent Timothy Coll, the case's lead investigator, sent an undercover informant into Hossain's restaurant with an assignment to become his friend.

The informant, posing as a wealthy import-export businessman, brought gifts for Hossain's children and expressed an interest in buying the struggling restaurant, according to Hossain.

"I told the cooperating witness to play a role," said Coll, who took the stand Thursday at Hossain's trial on charges of money laundering and supporting terrorism.

That role was filled by Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani immigrant who was facing prison and deportation after being arrested two years earlier in an unrelated FBI investigation involving fraudulent driver's licenses. Coll explained how Hussain had signed a plea deal in which he'd agreed to help authorities in other investigations, but this was his first case that didn't involve phony licenses.

Within weeks, Hossain and the informant were embroiled in intimate discussions about Islam and their personal philosophies, expressing deep fondness for one another as their conversations wended from religion to money and, ultimately, terrorism.

Coll, who is scheduled to resume his testimony this morning, did not say what made the FBI single out Hossain, whose co-defendant, Yassin Aref, is the jailed spiritual leader of a Central Avenue mosque. The pair face up to 400 years in prison if convicted of the charges, which include allegations they took part in laundering proceeds from a fictitious plot to sell weapons to terrorists.

It's not known why the FBI zeroed in on Aref, a Kurdish refugee and religious scholar who authorities have admitted was the "ultimate target" of their investigation. At the time, Hossain and Aref were close friends and prayed at the same mosque, which Hossain had a hand in opening.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William C. Pericak did not ask Coll Thursday what triggered the investigation. Instead, Coll spent much of his testimony giving the jury an inside look at the sting operation, which was built largely on secretly recorded conversations between Aref, Hossain and the informant.

He explained how the FBI hid their cameras in clocks, placed recording devices on the informant's body and sat in cars nearby using transmitters disguised as tape measures and pagers to listen in on the dozens of conversations that unfolded over a year beginning in the summer of 2003.

Many of the recordings -- grainy surveillance films and muddled audiotapes -- were played in court on a giant projection screen that also contained running transcripts so the jurors could follow what was being said as the conversations drifted between English, Arabic and Urdu.

Pages 2 & 3