Hundreds of terror suspects tried in federal courts?

By Robert Farley
Published on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 6:03 p.m.

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The Bush administration prosecuted 190 suspected terrorists in federal courts.

Barack Obama, Sunday, February 7th, 2010.

Ruling: Mostly False | Details

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The Supreme Court announced its ruling on the health care law on Thursday.

As the debate rages over whether Guantanamo detainees ought to be tried in federal court, a lot of numbers are flying around that may appear confusing or conflicting.

The debate has put one statistic front and center: Just how many terrorists have been tried and successfully convicted in federal courts in recent years? It's a more difficult number to track than you might think.

President Barack Obama recently said, "We're not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush administration handled them all through 9/11. They prosecuted the 190 folks in these Article III (federal) courts. Got convictions. And those folks are in maximum security prisons right now."

We found that when Obama cites this number in the same breath as Guantanamo detainees, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. So we rated his statement Barely True. Read our factcheck on Obama for the full story.