The Department of Justice is fighting back hard on the ongoing efforts by Lindsey Graham and the Cheney crowd to end civilian trials of terror suspects, highlighting the success rate of civilian courts in obtaining convictions.
In filings provided to the congressional intelligence and judiciary committees — and now to the press — the Department itemized all the people it’s successfully prosecuted since 9/11. It divides them into two categories: the first is for ”violations of federal statutes that are directly related to international terrorism and that are utilized regularly in international terrorism matters” and the second is for those convicted of a terror-supporting offense, like “fraud, immigration, firearms, drugs, false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, as well as general conspiracy charges.” All told, that’s 150 convictions in the first category, and 240 in the second, for a grand total of 390 people convicted on terror-related charges from September 11, 2001 to March 18, 2010.
And there’s more, according to the Justice Department’s filing, since its total “does not include defendants whose convictions remain under seal, nor does it include defendants who have been charged with a terrorism or terrorism-related offense but have not been convicted either at trial or by guilty plea.”
But the military commissions have convicted three people since 9/11, so that’s something.
Greg Sargent, who has been dogged in pushing elected Dems to engage in backing up Holder and the DoJ sees progress, and bursts former Bushies' talking points on the matter:
Former Bush flack Dana Perino recently said the claim of hundreds of prosecutions is “as false as it gets.” And GOP Senator Jeff Sessions dismissed it as “unsubstantiated.”
But in a letter to Sessions and his Dem counterpart on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, the Justice Department is calling their bluff. The letter says that since 2001 — and throughout the Bush years — the National Security Division has maintained an extensive chart documenting “international terrorism and terror-related prosecutions.”
The chart, which has been updated under Obama, “currently includes over 400 defendants,” the letter continues. “The bulk of the data included in this chart was generated, and related to prosecutions that occured, during the prior administration.” That would be the Bush administration.
Greg also has a copy of the chart [pdf] available.
