U.S. gains few terror convictions

WASHINGTON – The collapse in Detroit of the U.S. Justice Department’s first post-Sept. 11 prosecution of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell has left the Bush administration with few high-profile major criminal victories in the war on terror – and a growing list of losses and questionable cases.

Justice Department officials insist their record since the 2001 terrorist attacks reflects a successful strategy of catching suspected terrorists long before they can launch deadly plots, even if that involves charging them with lesser crimes.

But some legal experts and Bush administration critics say many such cases are pumped up by overzealous prosecutors.

“There’s been a tendency of the Justice Department to act overly aggressively, to hold news conferences, to seek headlines, but when the facts come out, they often are shown to be exaggerated,” said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and frequent critic of Bush administration counterterrorism policies.

According to the latest available figures, the Justice Department has charged more than 310 people in terrorism-related cases since Sept. 11, 2001, and has won 179 convictions – many for such relatively minor infractions as document and credit card fraud and immigration violations.

With fighting terrorism a cornerstone of President Bush’s re-election campaign, the administration has been unapologetic in its aggressive approach. Attorney General John Ashcroft repeatedly has said the best evidence that the strategy works is that no terrorist attacks have occurred on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

“You have to have a zero-tolerance policy for anything that could germinate into a terrorist plot or facilitate a terrorist plot,” said U.S. Attorney David Kelley of New York. “We’ve been rooting out people before things get too far along. Our success in that area has likely led to some disruption activity.”

In the Detroit case, the Justice Department agreed last week with defense lawyers that charges of material support for terrorism should be dropped against two men who were convicted in the first major terrorism prosecution after the attacks. A lengthy internal investigation uncovered prosecutorial misconduct that included withholding evidence that tended to bolster the men’s claims of innocence.

Problems have cropped up recently in a number of other high-profile cases:

•In Portland in May, lawyer Brandon Mayfield was held for days as a material witness after the FBI mistakenly said his fingerprint matched one found on a plastic bag connected to the deadly terror bombings in Madrid, Spain. Closer inspection proved the supposed match wrong.

•Two leaders of a mosque in Albany, N.Y., were released on bail Aug. 25 after a federal judge concluded the men were not as dangerous as prosecutors alleged. The evidence included a notebook found at an Iraqi terrorist camp that investigators initially said referred to one of the men as “commander”; FBI translators later said the reference probably means “brother.”

•University of Idaho student Sami Omar Al-Hussayen was acquitted in June on charges of giving terrorists material support by creating an Internet network that prosecutors claimed fostered Islamic extremism and helped Islamic militants recruit. “There was no clear-cut evidence that said he was a terrorist, so it was all on inference,” juror John Steger said after the verdict.