Tuesday, March 15, 2011

80% of All Terrorism Convictions Since 9-11 Involved Radical Islamists

"More than 80 percent of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11 involve defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda, a review of Department of Justice statistics shows.

Though Muslims represent about 1 percent of the American population, they constitute defendants in 186 of the 228 cases DOJ lists.

On Thursday, the House Homeland Security Committee holds its first hearing into radicalization among Muslim Americans. Critics have taken issue with the focus on one religious minority, but the DOJ list shows that radical Islamists are disproportionately involved in terror-related crimes.

Al-Qaida is involved in the largest number of prosecutions, representing 30 percent of the 228 terror cases involving an identified group. Hizballah-affiliated defendants are involved in 10.5 percent of the cases and Hamas is part of 9 percent. Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was involved in 6.5 percent of the cases.

The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the Colombian FARC lead the non-Islamist terrorist groups, combining for 14 percent of the total.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism analysis involved reviewing the Justice Department's list of more than 400 successful terrorism-related prosecutions from Sept. 11, 2001, through March 18, 2010. Those cases that demonstrated defendants with a clear Islamist agenda were placed in that category, while those without a clear tie to radical Islam were excluded. In some cases, defendants with Arabic-sounding names were excluded from the Islamist category, because no definitive tie could be made."

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