Criminal Enforcement Against Terrorists
A TRAC Special Report Supplement
September 5, 2002
what
do these counts mean?
This supplement provides the latest available information about the
referrals for prosecution by all agencies of matters that the United
States attorneys classified as involving terrorism. With data about
the referrals and prosecutions reported during April of 2002, it adds
a month to TRAC's previous supplement of June
2002. This abbreviated coverage has occurred because the Justice
Department is inexplicably withholding the records for the most recent
three-month period that TRAC has requested under the FOIA .
The just released April 2002, data, however, reveal several developments
of interest.
In absolute numbers, agency referrals to
federal prosecutors for matters categorized as international terrorism
jumped by one-third during April—170 new referrals compared with
495 from October 1, 2001 to March 31, 2002. The prosecutions of these
cases were also sharply higher, 115 in April alone. This compares to
only 51 in the first six months of FY 2002. By contrast, changes in
domestic terrorism enforcement were modest. In April, there were only
34 reported domestic terrorism referrals, compared with 450 previously.
And prosecutions actually lagged, only 6 new indictments versus 132
in the previous six months.
For complete trends see graphs for:
The actual referral-by-referrals records are available on TRAC's subscription
site, TRACFED.
The federal agency with the most international
terrorism referrals in April was a surprise—the Social Security
Administration. It recommended 78 individuals be indicted for such crimes,
compared with only 39 referrals during the month from the FBI. The Department
of Transportation was third with 23 new referrals, followed by the INS
and Customs. The FBI was the source of most referrals for domestic terrorism.
See table.
In terms of referrals and prosecutions of
these matters, which communities were most active? A total of 34 federal
judicial districts reported receiving new referrals for the prosecution
of either international or domestic terrorism. The government, however,
chose to direct most of the new international terrorism referrals—125
out of 170—to the federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of
Virginia (Alexandria) and all but two of the new prosecutions (113 out
of 115) were filed in this district. See table.
The Eastern district of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) had the largest
number of new referrals for domestic terrorism—4 out of 34 of them.
But unlike the case for international terrorism matters, referrals for
domestic terrorism were not concentrated in any particular district.
Earlier TRAC Terrorism Reports
| December 2001
| June 2002 |
