An anti-terror indictment!

Ex-Prosecutor in Terror Inquiry Is Indicted

The Times: A grand jury charged Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack.

The former prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a State Department employee who served as a chief government witness were each indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The grand jury charged that they had conspired to conceal evidence about photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot by the Detroit defendants.

Mr. Convertino, once a rising star at the Justice Department who fell out of favor with supervisors in Washington, denied that he had ever withheld evidence, and he pledged that he would be vindicated.

"These charges are clearly vindictive and retaliatory, and it's an effort to discredit and smear someone who tried to expose the government's mismanagement of the war on terrorism," he said in a telephone interview.

The indictment of the former prosecutor and one of his star witnesses marked a dramatic turnaround in a case once hailed by President Bush and John Ashcroft, his first attorney general, as a major breakthrough against terrorism plotted on American soil.

After four Muslim men were arrested days after the Sept. 11 attacks in a dilapidated Detroit apartment, federal authorities charged that they were part of a "sleeper" terrorist cell plotting attacks against Americans overseas.

Two of the men were convicted on terrorism charges after a high-profile trial in 2003, with Mr. Convertino as the lead prosecutor. But the case soon began to unravel amid accusations of concealed evidence and government misconduct. The Justice Department ultimately repudiated its own case, leading to the dismissal of all terrorism charges against the men in 2004.

"I can't recall a case like this in recent memory where you have not only the collapse of the prosecution's entire case, but now the prosecutor himself indicted," said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who has written on terrorism prosecutions.

"The government has made clear it's going to do everything it can to go after terrorism, but here you have a case where it appears that hubris might have intoxicated the prosecutor, and he might have taken one step over the line," Mr. Levin said.

I think it's a little more than hubris, professor. Try racism. It might even be a hate crime, not necessarily with Convertino as the defendant, but the Bush administration's Justice Department. They've created an atmosphere where it feels like anything goes if you can attach the word anti-terrorism to it.

I look forward to this case getting wall-to-wall coverage on FOX News and the rest of the media... much as the discredited case against the four men did when it first broke, and like all the other anti-terror cases that were trumpeted initially only to upon closer examination fallen apart.

Like in those cases Convertino, of course, is innocent until proven guilty. The Times gives him the last word; I'll give that to one of the men he went after.

Richard Helfrick, a public defender in Detroit who represented Karim Koubriti, one of the defendants originally convicted and then cleared on terrorism charges, said his client was gratified to learn of Mr. Convertino's indictment on Wednesday.

Mr. Koubriti "wants to be in court when Mr. Convertino is arraigned," Mr. Helfrick said.

Photo of Richard G. Convertino by Robin Buckson/The Detroit News, via the AP.