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

For instance, the case of a Kentucky businessman who pleaded guilty to lying about selling forklift parts to an Iranian truck manufacturer was categorized as a successful prosecution related to "international terrorism." The businessman was sentenced to 50 hours of community service and a year of probation.

Other cases, like the Michigan cigarette smugglers, show a pattern of government overreaching, say lawyers for some of the defendants. For instance, they note that in the indictment, many of those named are not charged with an overt act of giving money to a terrorist organization – just associating with people who did.

"These guys have never contributed a dollar to Hizbullah and wouldn't in a thousand years," says James Burdick, who represents Majid Hammoud and his brother.

The terrorism cases that did result in longer jail terms (14 resulted in 20 years or more) were usually the result of a government sting operation, like the case of Shahawar Matin Siraj. He was convicted last May of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in New York prior to the Republican National Convention.

"Had we not intervened, had we not put an informant next to them, would these really have been terrorist attacks? We don't know," says Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.

Jenkins and other terrorism experts say they're not surprised by the significant drop in terrorism prosecutions, in part because of the spike in the number of arrests in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

"The FBI grabbed the good stuff quickly. People who were at risk of being deemed terrorists or were terrorists went underground," says Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert in Washington. "It may well be that there's not a lot to work with now, only really hard cases with shards of information left."

That may figure into another TRAC finding: US attorneys declined to prosecute about two out of three cases (748 cases out of 1,391) categorized as "international terrorism" that were referred to them by investigative agencies. In the first six months of this year, nine out of 10 referrals were declined. "That's a very high declination rate," says Christopher Bebel, a former federal prosecutor.

At least one former FBI agent does not find it unusual that the US attorneys are declining to prosecute the vast majority of terrorism cases brought to them.

"Terrorism cases are a whole lot of work, and the likelihood of getting a conviction is very low," says Christopher Hamilton, senior fellow for terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies and the former chief of Palestinian investigations in the FBI.

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