Hearing Sheds Light on a Mysterious Case

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — This much is known about Anthony J. Tracy: He told government agents that he helped 270 Somalis illegally enter the United States through Cuba. He failed a lie detector test when he denied helping members of the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab. He was some sort of informant for the federal government going back at least as far as 2002.
And on Friday, Mr. Tracy, of Winchester, Va., was sentenced to roughly four months in jail, equal to time served, and walked out a free man.
The case against Mr. Tracy, who spent significant time in Kenya running an illicit travel agency, is shrouded in secrecy. His hearing on Friday was held in open court, but lawyers and the judge talked around the specifics of what he actually did. In fact, his guilty plea, apparently entered earlier this year, remains under seal. So the exact nature of his misconduct is unclear.
The few court records that are unsealed indicated that federal agents had been working feverishly for months trying to find the people that Mr. Tracy said he helped enter the United States.
Mr. Tracy, 35, told government agents that members of Al Shabaab, a group that is seeking to impose strict Islamic law in Somalia and has claimed responsibility for suicide bombing attacks, were among those who contacted him for help securing fake travel documents. Mr. Tracy denied helping them but failed that portion of a polygraph test.
“There have been around-the-clock attempts to locate individuals through certain methods, and we are working tirelessly to corroborate some of what the defendant has said,” a prosecutor, Jeanine Linehan, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court, according to a redacted transcript of a pretrial hearing.
A spokeswoman for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Cori Bassett, said Friday that the agency had investigated Mr. Tracy’s claims. “At this point, ICE does not have any evidence that links individuals who fraudulently obtained documents or visas from Tracy to any terrorist organizations,” Ms. Bassett said in a statement.
The unredacted portions of the transcript indicate that Mr. Tracy, while living in Kenya, served as an informant for ICE and at least one other government agency as far back as 2002. In an e-mail message sent this year to an associate, he wrote, “I helped a lot of Somalis and most are good, but there are some who are bad and I leave them to Allah.”
In the transcripts, Mr. Tracy’s lawyer, a federal public defender, Geremy Kamens, called the Shabaab issue “a red herring.” He said the government could not produce any proof that Mr. Tracy helped Al Shabaab, or that any of the people Mr. Tracy allegedly helped ever actually made it to the United States.
Mr. Kamens said after the sentencing that “we believe justice was served” by the sentence of time served.