Translator Who Took Classified Iraq Maps Is Sentenced
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

A Brooklyn man who stole classified documents while serving as a translator in Iraq was sentenced yesterday to 11 years in prison after a federal judge showed leniency, saying he could not tell with certainty whether the translator was spying for the insurgency or was only a troubled man who gathered the material for no apparent reason.
The documents in Noureddine Malki’s possession included battle maps showing routes used by American troops and lists of locations that troops suspected were used to hide weapons of mass destruction. Authorities found the documents in Malki’s Hoyt Street apartment in 2005, upon his return from a third tour in Iraq.
Taking the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn for the first time since his jailing nearly three years ago, Malki, now 48, testified that he believed the government was going “hard” on him because of his “cultural background” — he is Muslim and from Morocco. He said that he never used the contents of the documents to harm American troops.
“I love this country just as I love myself,” Malki, who moved to America in 1988 by way of France, said. “I will never ever bite the hand of the person that feeds me. The United States is the person who feeds me. I made an honest mistake. I overlooked the return of the classified material.”
Malki said he mistakenly packed up the documents during a hasty departure at the end of one of his tours. He worked for L-3 Titan Group as a translator for the U.S. Army, a position that brought him into contact with Iraqi sources who provided information to the Army. Although he had a security clearance, he was never authorized to have any of the documents discovered in his apartment; he pleaded guilty last year to unauthorized possession of documents related to the national defense.
An assistant United States attorney, John Buretta, suggested that Malki could have passed along the classified information to the insurgency. Mr. Buretta pointed out that Malki’s phone records and e-mails show that even after returning home to Brooklyn, he stayed in contact with Iraqis, some of whom had ties to the insurgency. The prosecutor also said Malki had been accused of sneaking off one of the bases he lived on while in Iraq and that a superior had shown concern over the amount of time Malki spent with an Iraqi source who had known contacts in the insurgency.
Mr. Buretta also tried to show that various files found on Malki’s computer — including pictures of corpses of Muslims as well as a music video extolling martyrdom and the capture of Jerusalem — demonstrated that Malki had a motive to harm this country. Malki countered by saying he was a collector of things, and he compared his Internet downloads to his collections of “stamps, currencies, and cartoons.” Malki also made the somewhat unusual claim that the pictures of corpses could have been useful for the “cultural awareness classes” that he taught to soldiers with whom he was posted.
A federal judge, Edward Korman of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, showed some leniency yesterday in sentencing Malki to a prison term of 11 years, at the lower end of the suggested guidelines.
“There is a certain amount of bizarreness about this case,” Judge Korman said, adding that he was “not 100% sure if we are dealing with a spy or someone who has other problems.
“It causes me to have some hesitation about the sentence,” he continued. “It could be he’s something more than someone who is acting bizarrely. But there just isn’t that degree of certainty.”
One point that seemed to trouble Judge Korman was why Malki, if he had taken the documents truly by accident, had not destroyed them upon realizing they were in his possession.
Malki, answering the judge’s question on that point, said he had “kept them in my apartment for the sole reason that I would establish contact” with an intelligence officer to whom he could return them.
That did not happen.