[And emblematically so, as the article makes clear (not only in its litany of failed cases, but also in the last two paragraphs, which make it clear that the curtailment of civil rights through preventative detention is now the avowed goal). This has turned out even worse then the Wen Ho Lee case. The initial ground for suspicion was even scantier, they treated him worse, and not only has there been no outrage, the collapse of the case has barely been mentioned anywhere. The comparison of the two seems to mark how much the civil liberties situation has shifted since 9/11.]
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/728499d6-0dd3-11d9-a3e1-00000e2511c8.html
Financial Times September 24 2004 03:00 Awkward questions grow as another US terror case collapses By Edward Alden in Washington
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 fallen.
Similarly, the commission investigating the attacks released a critical report last month on Washington's efforts to shut down alleged terrorist financiers. One of the more prominent targets, Al-Barakaat, a money exchange company, was accused by the US of diverting money to al-Qaeda and shut down by US sanctions in November 2001. But FBI investigations "could find no direct evidence at all of any real link between al-Barakaat and terrorism of any type", said the commission.
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 -- involving 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 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".