Questions grow as another US terror case collapses

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From:
Date: September 23, 2004 6:45:07 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Questions grow as another US terror case collapses

Dave
  please witheld my name if forwarded to IP

Questions grow as another US terror case collapses
By Edward Alden in Washington, Financial Times

One year ago, a 25-year-old translator working for the US Air Force at 
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was charged with crimes that could have brought 
him a death sentence. Ahmad al Halabi was accused of being part of an 
undercover spy ring passing secret information to Syria with the intent 
of damaging US efforts to fight the war on terror.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon dropped virtually all the charges against Mr 
Halabi, who was imprisoned for nearly a year, admitting that he posed 
no danger to the country and had done nothing worse than disobey orders 
by taking two unauthorised photographs of Camp Delta and accidentally 
carrying a copy of his classified orders to his living quarters on the 
base.

The astonishing collapse of the case against Mr Halabi is only the 
latest in what is becoming a catalogue of botched terrorism 
investigations. Two of the three men accused of being part of the 
Guantánamo spy ring have now been freed, while the other faces charges 
only of mishandling sensitive information.

The Justice Department this week also said it would release without 
charge Yaser Esam Hamdi, a US-born Saudi who was held in isolation for 
more than two years after he was detained in Afghanistan, declared an 
unlawful "enemy combatant" and interrogated for his supposed knowledge 
of al-Qaeda plots.

The growing list of failed prosecutions is raising tough questions 
about why Washington has so often levelled terrorism accusations 
against innocent inviduals. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California 
Democrat, said last week the Justice Department "trumpets arrests and 
indictments in terrorism cases, but those announcements don't seem to 
be matched by prosecution".

For instance, of the nearly 1,200 individuals imprisoned on immigration 
violations after September 11 2001 on suspicion of having terrorist 
ties, not one was convicted of a terrorist offence. And of the roughly 
100 convictions the Justice Department has obtained in terrorism 
investigations, virtually all have been for minor crimes not linked to 
terrorism. A Syracuse University study late last year found that while 
investigations of terrorism-related offences had grown five-fold in the 
two years after September 11, convictions for serious crimes resulting 
in five or more years in prison had actually fallen.

Similarly, the commission investigating the attacks released a highly 
critical report last month on Washington's efforts to shut down alleged 
terrorist financiers. One of the more prominent targets, Al-Barakaat, a 
Somali-based money exchange company, was accused by the US of diverting 
money to al-Qaeda and was shut down by US sanctions in November 2001. 
But subsequent investigations by the FBI "could find no direct evidence 
at all of any real link between al-Barakaat and terrorism of any type", 
the commission's staff reported.

In other cases with more plausible links to terrorism, including the 
Illinois-based charities Benevolence International Foundation and 
Global Relief Foundation, the government has still been unable to 
secure any terrorist-related convictions.

Washington defends its record by pointing to several successful 
prosecutions for "material support" to terrorism, involving small 
groups in northern Virginia, Portland and Lackawanna in upstate New 
York.

But even in those cases, particularly the Lackawanna case - which 
involved six men who had briefly attended al-Qaeda training camps 
before returning home - serious questions have been raised about the 
convictions.

US officials say that despite these setbacks, success should be 
measured not by the number of successful convictions but by a different 
standard - that of preventing further terrorist attacks.

Barry Sabin, chief of the counter-terrorism division in the Justice 
Department, cryptically acknowledged to a Senate panel last week that 
in order to prevent terrorism, arrests were often made before the 
investigations were completed. If the US wants to disrupt potential 
terrorists, he said, "cases are taken down earlier and you will have 
less playing-out of the investigating".

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6a769a80-0da8-11d9-a3e1-00000e2511c8.html

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