Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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More Than 2,000 Cases Tied to Foreign Terrorist Organizations Under FBI
Scrutiny

Masood Farivar

   WASHINGTON - The FBI says it is investigating more than 2,000 cases
   tied to groups designated by the United States as foreign terrorist
   organizations, a figure that reflects the persistent threat posed by
   outfits such as al-Qaida and Hezbollah.

   There are currently 68 individual groups on the U.S. State Department's
   list of foreign terrorist organizations, the vast majority jihadi
   outfits such as al-Qaida. The designation allows the U.S. to freeze the
   groups' and their members' assets and investigate their activities.

   The FBI's renewed focus on foreign terrorist organizations and their
   members partly reflects the quiet resurgence in recent years of
   al-Qaida, said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on
   Extremism at George Washington University.

   "While the primary focus was ISIS the last few years, al-Qaida used
   that time to bide their time and build up a network," Hughes said. "And
   so, these cases are still out there, and they're going to have to look
   at them. It's not just ISIS --there are al-Qaida, its affiliates, and
   then you have groups like Hezbollah."

   Out of about 5,000 terrorism cases under investigation, approximately
   850 are focused on domestic terrorism such as far-right violence, while
   the rest have a nexus to international terrorism, the FBI said in
   response to a query from Voice of America.

   The international terrorism investigations are in turn divided into
   about 1,000 cases each of so-called homegrown violent extremism and
   Islamic State. The rest are made upof "thousands of other cases
   associated with foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and
   Hezbollah," the FBI said.

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