BROOKLYN

PROSECUTORS: ARMY TRANSLATOR HAD LINKS TO IRAQI INSURGENCY

An Arabic translator for the Army may have secretly helped Iraqi insurgents by taking classified documents home from Iraq to Brooklyn, where he made a series of calls to numbers linked to the insurgency, a federal prosecutor said yesterday. The man was charged last month with falsifying his identity over many years, beginning when he entered America seeking political asylum sometime between 1978 and 1989. His alleged ties to the insurgency were disclosed for the first time at a bail hearing yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn. The man’s attorney said he simply had been maintaining innocent relationships with Iraqi contacts approved by his military supervisors. Using the name Almaliki Nour, the man became a legal resident of the U.S. in 1993 and went to work for a defense contractor a decade later as a translator for an intelligence unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, according to an FBI complaint. As he worked in Iraq, the FBI and Department of Defense discovered that he had fabricated his name, birth date, native country, Lebanon, and family background as the persecuted son of a Muslim father and Catholic mother, the complaint said.

– Associated Press

MANHATTAN

DOMINICAN FUGITIVE IN SCHOOL SEX ABUSE CASE PLEADS GUILTY

An assistant principal who was involuntarily returned to America after being charged with sexually abusing teenage boys at a Manhattan high school pleaded guilty yesterday to charges related to the abuse and to bail jumping. Juan Taveras, 42, of Manhattan, pleaded guilty to 11 counts including criminal sexual act, falsifying business records, and bail jumping.

– Associated Press

AGREEMENT PAVES WAY FOR OPENING OF FISH MARKET

Fish merchants and a contractor who had been waging court battles over control of unloading fish at the Fulton Fish Market came to an agreement yesterday that would pave the way for the market’s opening in the Bronx November 12,nearly one year after it was scheduled to open. The agreement will allow a contractor, Laro Services, installed by Mayor Giuliani 10 years ago to stop organized crime from controlling the business in the South Street Seaport, to unload the fish for the next three years. The merchants will then decide whether to renew the contract. Laro also agreed to pay $300,000 a year to the market to store its equipment inside the new $85 million facility in Hunts Point.

– Special to the Sun

STATEWIDE

LOCAL OFFICIALS URGE STATE NOT TO ADOPT TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING

A day before what is expected to be New York’s last election using lever voting machines, local elected officials urged the state not to adopt touch-screen computer models for 2006. The Board of Elections gave its tentative approval for a new voting system last week, and the state is likely to choose between two options – a paper ballot with optical scan technology, or computer-based machines. Local officials, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, and Democratic state senators, Liz Krueger and David Patterson, endorsed the optical scanning ballot, saying at a City Hall news conference that the computer machines are too expensive and prone to malfunction.

– Special to the Sun

LONG ISLAND

NURSE SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS IN MEDICAID SCAM

A Long Island nurse was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday for scamming the Medicaid program out of nearly $550,000, the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said. Jocelyne Louis-Charpentier, 49, pleaded guilty to grand larceny and offering a false instrument. She was paid to give home care to several disabled children – including a 6-year-old wheelchair-bound girl and a 7-year-old boy on a respirator – but was caught billing Medicaid for services she said she provided when she was actually working at a hospital or outside the country. In addition to consecutive one-year jail terms, Louis-Charpentier was fined $117,057 in criminal restitution, and in a separate civil suit filed by the attorney general, she was ordered to pay $432,754.

– Special to the Sun

CITYWIDE

ACTIVISTS SAY N.Y. COMMUNITY BANK LENDING TO NEGLIGENT LANDLORDS

Tenants and activists accused New York Community Bank, New York City’s leading mortgage provider for multi-family buildings, of lending money to negligent landlords, allegedly including several of the city’s worst. “Mortgage documents require that the landlord keep the building in good repair, so NYCB has a responsibility,” the lead organizer for Housing Here and Now, Chloe Tibich, said at a rally in Midtown yesterday. Housing Here and Now is coalition of activist groups for affordable housing. Representatives for New York Community Bank, which is in the process of acquiring Atlantic Bank of New York, were unavailable for comment by press time.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun