Legal war on terror lacks weapons
After six months, the world's biggest criminal investigation has yielded meager results.
In the six months since Sept. 11, police across the United States and Europe have arrested nearly 1,400 people in connection with the attacks on New York and Washington. But they have charged only one of them in connection with the worst terrorist outrage in history.
No Al Qaeda cells have been uncovered in the US, while in Europe only seven men picked up since Sept. 11 have been served with formal charges related to Islamist terrorism. Seventy-eight more are in jail, pending the outcome of investigations ranging from credit-card fraud to an alleged plot to blow up the US Embassy in Paris. But only eight of those are suspected of involvement in the destruction of the World Trade Center.
The meager results of the most intensive and widespread criminal investigation ever mounted have raised questions about whether traditional law enforcement and judicial procedures can cope with international terrorism.
"The low visible yield does not bode well for future efforts like this," says Michael Levi, professor of criminology at Cardiff University in Wales.
Indeed, the difficulties of tracking down suspects and amassing sufficient evidence to convict them leads some experts to wonder whether it is worth it. "Is terrorism a crime or is it war?" asks Stephen Gale, a counterterrorism expert who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you think someone is going to take out your electrical grid, in a criminal investigation you arrest him. In a war you shoot first and ask questions later," he points out.
While US officials believe some top Al Qaeda leaders may have been killed in the war in Afghanistan, criminal investigations at home and in Europe have enjoyed no such success. Only one of the men in custody on suspicion of terrorist connections Abu Qutada, a Jordanian being held in London is thought to be a ranking member of Osama bin Laden's organization, and he has not been charged with any crime. The rest are suspected of being, at most, low-level members of Al Qaeda's loose-knit network, with little or no knowledge of future plans.
The disappointing haul does not mean that Al Qaeda cells are less widespread than authorities thought, say European law enforcement officials, nor that the police do not have very strong suspicions about some individuals they are watching or holding. But they have been unable to turn those suspicions into formal accusations in many cases because of the particular difficulty of mounting terrorist cases.
Seeking those involved in the Sept. 11 events is especially hard, says Professor Levi, because reconstituting a terrorist network post facto is nearly impossible if members used ephemeral means such as the Internet to communicate. "This is not like a normal, organized crime case, where you round up the suspects after surveillance," Levi explains. "The people involved in this were not suspected before, so they weren't being watched, and much of the evidence will have disappeared."
