After a surge, US terror prosecutions drop to pre-9/11 levels

With great fanfare, the federal government last March announced indictments against 19 people for "racketeering to support a terrorist organization." The allegation: They trafficked in contraband cigarettes and other items and sent some of the profits to Hizbullah in Lebanon, which the US calls a terrorist organization.

In the announcement, a US attorney said the terror fight is his office's No. 1 priority. But lawyers for some of those charged claim their clients had nothing to do with terror. At best, they say, their clients may have been involved in "nickel-and-dime" criminal activity.

The contrasting views of this case illustrate the difficulties encountered by the federal government in prosecuting terrorism. A new analysis of federal data since 9/11 also underscores the difficulties: It finds that the number of criminal prosecutions for international terrorism in the US has dropped sharply.

After spiking up in the aftermath of the attacks, the number of prosecutions started to decline in 2004 and now stands at pre-9/11 levels, according to a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse (N.Y.) University. In addition, the length of sentences served by those convicted of international terror-related crimes has dropped from a median of 41 months prior to 9/11, to 28 days in the two years following the attacks.

Analysts say one reason for the drop is the intensity of the law-enforcement activity in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, which then leveled off. Critics also point to the way the government conducts its homeland-security policy: They raise questions about the effectiveness of its current surveillance and intelligence operations, and also ask whether the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated.

The Department of Justice counters that the report "presents a misleading analysis," and it strongly objects to the suggestion that the threat of terrorism may be exaggerated. It says the TRAC report ignores the DOJ's "successful strategy of prevention through prosecution." "It is irresponsible to attempt to measure success in the war on terror without the necessary details about the government's strategies and tactics," said Bryan Sierra in a prepared statement.

The Justice Department says that by going after small offenses – such as fraud – it's able to disrupt terrorist activity. It declined to provide a spokesperson to address directly some of the issues raised in the TRAC report.

An independent review by the Monitor of dozens of cases categorized by the government as terrorism or terrorism-related supported the findings in the TRAC report. The Monitor review – which covered cases characterized by the Justice Department as successful terror prosecutions, as well as those included in the TRAC data – found many cases had tenuous connections to terrorism and resulted in little, if any, jail time.

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