In U.S. civilian courts, federal prosecutors won convictions in two antiterrorism criminal cases.
Because a close look at the antiterrorism programs reveals a case study in Washington diffusion, responsibility passed from Congress to the White House and back again.
The restrictions on communication between detainees and their lawyers in many cases impedes our antiterrorism effort -- it's counterproductive.
Some newspaper columnists and civil rights advocates contend that the case proves that antiterrorism legislation allowing for detention based on simple suspicion of illegal terrorist activity, enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, oversteps constitutional guarantees.
"Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued against the expert guidance part of the antiterrorism law this year, in a case where it was struck down by a federal judge.
In another newspaper, Le Figaro, a former antiterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, wrote: "In this case, the first elements collected seem to show that there is a phenomenon of self-radicalization that expanded in a rather worrisome way.
The case began as an antiterrorism investigation after the police saw laboratory equipment in Mr. Kurtz's home after the death of his wife, but suspicions of terrorism were swiftly ruled out.
The man, who was the test case for Canada's first antiterrorism laws, introduced in 2001, cannot be named because he was a juvenile when charged.
Mr. Musharraf's case was heard in an antiterrorism court on Saturday because a judge had earlier declared that the former president's detention of senior judges constituted an act of terrorism.
A spokeswoman for the court said these charges were not unusual in Las Vegas but she did not know whether the area's antiterrorism task force was involved in the case.
Since Sept. 11, Congress has toughened the antiterrorism laws, and Mr. Al-Arian's case is one of several long-running Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiries into Muslim organizations in suburban Chicago, Dallas and northern Virginia that are suspected of funneling money to terrorist groups.
