News

Somali’s case a template for U.S. as it seeks to prosecute terrorism suspects in federal court

March 31, 2013March 31, 2013
0 0

By 

Aboard the USS Boxer, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was sitting across from a team of interrogators, talking and talking. In secure meeting rooms in Washington, senior officials in the Obama administration were wringing their hands over what to do with him.

Some in the administration desperately wanted to prosecute Warsame — a key facilitator between al-Qaeda franchises — in federal court. To do that, though, they needed a “clean team” of FBI agents to come in and read the Somali his rights, perhaps jeopardizing his willingness to keep talking. The quandary was particularly acute because Warsame had intelligence on Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and a senior leader in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

 “There was a fair amount of debate because some of the intel guys didn’t want to stop the interrogation,” said a former administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal government deliberations. “Others were getting antsy because they thought the longer you hold the guy and don’t Mirandize him, the worse off you are” if prosecutors try him in federal court.

In late June 2011, after two months of interrogation, the president’s national security advisers made the call. A team of FBI agents gave Warsame a Miranda warning, advising him of his right to remain silent and his right to counsel. “Then there was a kind of hold-your-breath moment,” the former official said.

Warsame waived his rights and continued to talk.

In that instant, the Obama administration may have preserved its ability to use the federal courts to prosecute high-value terrorists captured overseas.

Warsame was detained in April 2011, the same month that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. abandoned a criminal civilian trial in New York for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Holder sent the case back to a military commission at Guantanamo Bay. On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats were insisting that all terrorists captured overseas be sent to the military detention center in Cuba.

But inside the administration, senior lawyers calculated that Warsame could be interrogated for actionable intelligence while preparations were underway to bring him to federal court in New York for prosecution. For an administration that is determined not to add to the detainee population atGuantanamo, the handling of the Somali’s case has become something of a template for other terrorism suspects captured overseas.

Detainees are first held under the laws of war and questioned by an interagency team of interrogators, including military, intelligence and law enforcement personnel, without being advised of their rights. At some point, the interrogation is halted and — in the parlance of prosecutors — a “clean break” is established before a fresh team of only FBI agents informs the prisoner of his right to counsel. Shortly afterward, the suspect is put on a plane and flown to a federal district, most often New York, for trial.

Source: Washington Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.