U.S. claim of terror cases in Iowa raises doubt

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Published Monday

July 19, 2004

 

U.S. claim of terror cases in Iowa raises doubt

 

 

 

DES MOINES (AP) - Federal prosecutors claim they built

35 terrorism-related cases in Iowa in the two years

after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but most of the

defendants have questionable links to violent

extremism.

 

Defendants who could be identified by the Des Moines

Register were, in most cases, charged with fraud or

theft and served just a few months in jail.

 

" If there have been terrorism-related arrests in Iowa,

I haven't heard about them, " said U.S. District Judge

Robert Pratt. But Pratt himself presided over

courtroom proceedings in at least six of the criminal

cases that federal prosecutors had cataloged as

terrorist in nature.

 

Included among the 35 cases were:

 

• Four American-born laborers who omitted mention of

prior drug convictions or other crimes when they were

assigned by a contractor to a runway construction

project at the Des Moines airport or when they applied

for manual-labor jobs there.

 

• Five Mexican citizens who stole cans of baby formula

from store shelves throughout Iowa and sold them to a

man of Arab descent for later resale.

 

• Two Pakistani men who entered into or solicited sham

marriages so that they and their friends could

continue to live in the Waterloo area and work at

convenience stores there.

 

The Iowa arrests were part of a national compilation

of statistics by the U.S. Department of Justice to

lobby Congress.

 

Lumping minor crimes under the terrorism label could

wrongly heighten public anxiety and provide a

questionable rationale for more anti-terror resources,

critics say.

 

" When people read that they're doctoring the numbers,

aren't they going to have less confidence in the

Justice Department and the war on terror? " asked U.S.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. " You can't say that

somebody's a terrorist when he isn't a terrorist. "

 

Prosecutors stressed that many of the Iowa cases were

classic examples of illegal activities that are

perpetrated by terrorist groups. And though any

evidence of terrorist connections or motives was

rarely mentioned in the courtroom, officials implied

that some of the suspects might still be under

suspicion, even since their release.

 

" 'Bona fide' terrorism is a matter of semantics, " said

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Murphy, who heads the

criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in

Cedar Rapids. " I don't think you can draw conclusions

based on what a person is convicted of. "

 

Beginning in late 2001, federal prosecutors in Cedar

Rapids filed charges against nine people and issued

arrest warrants for at least 11 more in connection

with Youssef Hmimssa, a document forger whose

customers included members of a suspected terrorist

cell in Detroit.

 

None of those in Iowa who bought fake IDs from Hmimssa

answered to charges more serious than fraud or

conspiracy to commit fraud. All who were convicted

served between two and 11 months in jail. Yet all of

their cases were listed by Iowa prosecutors as

terrorist-related.

 

" We charged them with readily provable offenses, "

explained U.S. Attorney Charles Larson, who heads the

Justice Department's Cedar Rapids office. " We haven't

had a shoe bomber. . . . But if we've disrupted one

part of what might have developed into a cell, we've

done something important in prevention. "

 

In the two full years before the 9/11 attacks, there

were no federal criminal prosecutions in Iowa related

to terrorism, according to a Justice Department

database obtained by researchers affiliated with

Syracuse University.

 

When four Iowans were indicted on Jan. 29, 2003, for

making false statements to Des Moines airport

officials on job documents, the cases were marked

internally by federal prosecutors as " anti-terrorism. "

 

Most were charged months after their offenses, and all

four were released on bail while awaiting trial.

 

Lawyers for the men said they could not recall

hearing, either in court or during plea discussions,

any allegations from prosecutors about terrorist

motives. Most of the defendants contended that they

had signed the airport forms without reading them or

had misunderstood the disclosures they were required

to make as part of their jobs or their job

applications.

 

Two of the airport suspects were found not guilty by a

jury. Another case was dismissed when the defendant

agreed to report to a probation officer. The fourth

man, an applicant for a freight-handler job, pleaded

guilty and was placed on probation.

 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Patrick O'Meara, who

heads the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's

Office in Des Moines, said the " anti-terrorism " label

was used in the airport cases because the crimes were

discovered as part of a specific initiative to snare

potential terrorists.

 

He said the Justice Department directs prosecutors to

assign credit for an arrest during a targeted

terrorism operation, " even where the offense is not

obviously a federal crime of terrorism. "

 

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