DETROIT, Michigan, Sept 2 (AFP) - A US judge threw out terrorism charges Thursday against two Morocan immigrants convicted in what US authorities admitted this week was a botched terror trial.
US District Court Judge Gerald Rosen, acting on a request from the US Justice Department, dismissed the terror charges against Karim Koubriti, 26, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38.
He further ordered that the two defendants, and a third man, Ahmed Hannan, be retried on charges of document fraud at the request of defense attorneys.
Koubriti and Elmardoudi, 38, were convicted in June 2003 of conspiring to provide material support to terrorism by casing target sites in Las Vegas, Disneyland and military bases in Turkey and Jordan.
The pair, members of an alleged Detroit "sleeper cell," were also convicted of document fraud, and were facing up to 10 and 15 years in prison, respectively.
A third man, Ahmed Hannan, 36, was acquitted on the terror charged but convicted of visa fraud.
The development follows the publication of a report by the Justice Department earlier this week, in which officials criticised a federal prosecutors for witholding evidence from the defense at the original trial.
"In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived the defendants of discoverable evidence ... and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist," it states.
In essence the government admitted that it suppressed information that drawings, videos and testimony in the case could be plausibly explained as something besides terrorism activity.
Koubriti and Elmardoudi are in custody pending sentence. Hannan is free on bond.