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 up of “thousands of other cases associated with foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and Hezbollah,” the FBI said.An FBI agent gives out information to members of the media outside of the Chabad of Poway Synagogue, April 27, 2019, in Poway, Calif. Several people were injured in a shooting at the synagogue. The FBI did not provide historical data on terrorism investigations, making it difficult to assess the aggregate figure. However, the number in several categories, including homegrown violent extremism and domestic terrorism, has hovered around 1,000 cases in recent years, according to FBI officials.In the post-9/11 era “they’re obligated to open and investigate every plausible threat,” said David Gomez, a former FBI special agent and terrorism investigator.The vast majority of the investigations do not lead to prosecution, Gomez noted, adding that the FBI opens investigations for both intelligence-gathering and prosecution purposes.The FBI’s three largest field offices — in Washington, New York and Los Angeles — are probably responsible for as much as 80% of the investigations, Gomez said.
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