The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. July 16, 2013 New York Woman Launches "Journey for Justice" for Jailed Imam -------------------------------------------------------------- A New York activist is walking 133 miles from Albany to Binghamton to bring a federal judge signed petitions on behalf of an imprisoned imam named Yassin Aref. Aref was sentenced to 15 years in prison, along with another mosque leader in 2007, for laundering money as part of a fake terror plot invented by the FBI. Aref's lawyers now say secret evidence revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request shows the FBI targeted Yassin Aref because they mistook him for an al-Qaeda agent named Mohammed Yasin who was reportedly killed in an Israeli strike in 2010. Now, Lynne Jackson has launched a "Journey for Justice" to deliver a petition calling for "serious consideration of Aref's assertion that the government targeted and convicted an innocent man." This is Lynne Jackson speaking Friday as she walked with supporters. Lynne Jackson: "The FBI targeted him because they thought he was an al-Qaeda agent when, in fact, he was not. And, because this evidence was kept secret during the trial, the defense was unable to challenge that evidence. And this is why secret evidence is so bad. So, we have filed the petitions — lawyers have filed the petitions today, and, I'm going to hand-deliver signed petitions in support of Yassin Aref to the judge in Binghamton, New York."