Washington Post: US government is exaggerating terrorism cases
Regional-USA, Politics, 6/14/2005

A report by the Washington Post reveals that the US government has exaggerated the number of convictions that have been related to terrorism inside the United States, by including cases that have nothing to do with terrorism.

The Washington Post on Sunday, in an investigative report, said "Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department database has served as the key source of statistics on the status of terrorism investigations in the United States and has been cited frequently in official speeches and testimony to Congress. The list obtained by The Post includes 361 cases defined as terrorism investigations by the department's criminal division from Sept. 11, 2001, through late September 2004. Thirty-one entries could not be evaluated because they were sealed and blacked out. (The list does not include about 40 cases filed since then that account for Bush's total of about 400.) The Post sought to update and correct data whenever possible, including noting convictions or sentences handed down within the past nine months."

The Washington Post investigation shows that out of the 361 cases "The Post identified 180 cases in which no connection to al Qaeda or another terrorist group could be found in court records, official statements, the 9/11 commission report or news accounts."

The Washington Post reported that "Of the 142 individuals on the list linked to terrorist groups, 39 were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. More than a dozen defendants were acquitted or had their charges dismissed... The median sentence for all cases adjudicated, whether or not they were terrorism-related, was 11 months. About three dozen other defendants were given probation or were deported. The most common convictions were on charges of fraud, making false statements, passport violations and conspiracy."

The Washington Post reported "More than a third of the cases on the list arose from a post-Sept. 11 FBI dragnet, which resulted in the arrests of hundreds of Muslim immigrants for minor violations unrelated to the hijackings or terrorism." The Post Washington reported: "What we're seeing over time is the equivalent of mission creep: Cases that would not be terrorism cases before Sept. 11 are swept onto the terrorism docket," said Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration Justice official who heads the national security program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The problem is that it's not good to cook the numbers... We have no accurate assessment of whether the war on terrorism is actually working."

The Washington Post in this report, and other reports also published on Sunday, goes on to show multitude of cases being labeled as terrorism cases by the government when these cases had nothing to do terrorism. In one example, The Washington Post investigation reports that "a French national who made the mistake of illegally crossing the Canadian border on Sept. 14, 2001, with box cutters in his possession. It turned out that Guagni used the knives in his job as a drywall installer. He was deported in March 2003 after pleading guilty to unlawfully entering the country." "His case had nothing to do with terrorism, as far as I've ever been told," said Guagni's attorney, Christopher D. Smith.

Previous Stories:
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  US Senate to hold hearings on Guantanamo detainees   (6/10/2005)
  US Congress approves bill on UN reform   (6/10/2005)

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