NEW YORK – 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.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0905/p01s04-usju.html
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