Mon 6 Nov 2006
Study: FBI terror cases often rejected by Justice Dept.
Posted by k under Civil LibertiesNo Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records.
The government said the findings are inaccurate and “intellectually dishonest.”
The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI 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’s executive office for U.S. attorneys.
That number marks the peak of generally steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI, according to the report.
The data “raise troubling questions about the bureau’s investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists,” the report said.
Full article: cnn.com