Ex-Prosecutor Accused of Concealing Evidence in Terror Case

[kpete]

Ex-Prosecutor Accused of Concealing Evidence in Terror Case

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: March 29, 2006
WASHINGTON, March 29 — A grand jury charged today that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in the case in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack.

The 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 from the jury about photographs of an American military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot concocted 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 striking 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.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/national/29cnd-prosecutor.html?ei=5088&en=f6c4097df9f09306&ex=1301288400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1143685025-U/TIAlH8040wa30bLb0fJg