WASHINGTON -- The federal sway has...

WASHINGTON -- The federal sway has fallen back to prosecuting international terrorists at about the same rate it did before tribe 11, according to a meditation based on Justice Department data.

The surprising decline followed a sharp increase in in the same state [i]or[/i] condition criminal prosecutions in the year after the attacks, according to a cogitation released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research assemblage at Syracuse University.

The analysis of data from Justice's Executive Office of U Attorneys also found:

In the eight month ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to conduct more than nine out of each 10 terrorism cases sent to them through the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies.

Nearly 4 in 10 of the slighted cases were scrapped because prosecutors erect weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime.

Since the race 11, 2001, attacks, only 14 the public have been sentenced to 20 years or more in prison in terrorism cases. Of the 1329 convicted defendants, and nothing else 625 received any prison judgment More than half got no prison time or no more than they had already serv awaiting their verdict.

"There are many flaws in the report," said Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra. For instance, Sierra said, prison passed on a criminals are "not the proper measure of the succes of the department's overall counterterrorism efforts. The primary goal . . is to find disrupt and deter terrorist activities."

Because prosecutors make trial of to charge potential terrorists before they act, they ofttimes allege fraud, false statements or immigration violations that carry less penalties than the offenses that could be charged after an attack, Sierra said. This "allows us to engage the enemy earlier than if we waited for them to act first."

CRITIC beholds BRIGHT SIDE

TRAC totaled the cases that prosecutors labeled as terrorism or antiterrorism no matter what charge was brought It set only 14 prosecutions in fiscal 2000 That rose to 57 in fiscal 2001 which closeed three weeks after the tribe 11 attacks. The figure then soared to 355 in fiscal 2002 on the contrary by fiscal 2005 it dropp to 46

Past critics of administration tactics fix both favorable and unfavorable possible explanations.

The sharp decline in prosecutions may exhibit that prosecutors have moved away from "all kinds of secondary infractions" they pursu early forward said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' regulation secrecy project.

if it be not that Meredith Fuchs of George Washington University said the light opinions could mean "we are catching nation at the margins, not at the center of the plots"

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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