Episode 5 - Ideology

Terror Talk

The crucial aspect of the Aref-Hossain case, in order to convict Yassin, was to prove he was “predisposed” to commit terrorism, and so the government had to submit “evidence” to this effect - the government wanted to prove that Yassin had the “ideology".

The government did this by presenting certain deliberate mistranslations and innuendo from Yassin's journals, offering false ideas that Yassin held about the West, and by arguing Yassin's supposed connection to Mullah Krekar, a leader of the IMK in Damascus where Yassin worked. The government want to convict Yassin by using guilt by association. Except: these proofs were not proof at all. Yassin was an activist for Kurdish independence, even as a young man; he was educated and keenly aware of international politics, including the role of the US in the 1990s in possibly liberating Kurdistan. Yassin was a poet, whose use of imagery and metaphor and imagination as a political tool was the prerogative of any literary artist.