AP
A botched Detroit terrorism case that already has embarrassed the Bush administration is taking a new twist: A fresh FBI analysis of the evidence undercuts the recent indictment of the former chief prosecutor in the case.
The 13-page report by FBI Agent Paul George concludes that satellite photos of a Jordanian hospital closely match hand-drawn sketches found in 2001 inside the apartment of four Detroit men who the government claimed had surveyed the site as part of a terrorist plot.
The new analysis conflicts with the Justice Department's argument that photographic evidence did not match the sketches, and renews questions about whether the government correctly arrested the four men as a terrorist cell shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
----
Convictions of three of the four Detroit men were tossed out in 2004 after the Justice Department told the court its own prosecutors withheld photos from defense lawyers that could have helped prove the defendants innocence.
Last month, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard G. Convertino and a State Department investigator were indicted on charges they conspired at the trial to withhold the pictures because they would have shown that the drawings were not surveillance sketches of the hospital, as Convertino and trial witnesses had portrayed.
No comments:
Post a Comment