Prosecutors reject 87% of FBI's terror cases: report

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/125217,CST-NWS-fbi06.article

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to researchers.
The government says the findings are inaccurate and ''intellectually dishonest.''

The report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations.

Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006, according to the report. The study was based on the most recent data available from the Justice Department.

That number marks the peak of steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI, the report said.