Monday, October 30, 2017

American ISIS Fighter Captured In Syria And Held In Iraq Now Wants A Lawyer

Iraqi special forces intelligence agents check men's IDs in the search for Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq on Nov. 27. Credit:Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Washington Post: Case of suspected American ISIS fighter captured in Syria vexes U.S.

Justice Department officials don’t believe they have enough evidence to charge an American citizen and suspected member of the Islamic State who was captured in Syria last month, but the United States will face immediate legal challenges if he is not released and is detained without trial.

The issue threatens to reignite court battles fought during the George W. Bush administration when the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. citizens cannot be held indefinitely as members of al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups under war legislation Congress passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The court ruled that they are entitled to counsel and the right to challenge the evidence against them before a neutral arbitrator.

Nearly seven weeks ago, on Sept. 12, the man apparently surrendered to a rebel group in Syria, which handed him over to U.S. forces, according to officials familiar with his case. Since then, his name, age and other personal details, including a second country of citizenship, have been withheld, even from U.S. lawyers seeking to represent him. He is being held in a Defense Department “short-term facility” in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: If you have no evidence .... why keep him? The problem is that many of these surviving ISIS fighters have committed terrible war crimes .... and those who could provide evidence against these men have (unfortunately) been killed by them. This is not going to be resolved over night .... but I suspect that the pressure to release him is only going to grow with time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's some justice in the world, that kind of comes over time.. when all the Nazis fled Germany and hid in places like Argentina, the Nazi hunters didn't just let them live a happy life.. they came for them! Even decades later. I hope the same will happen to ISIS members.. years and even decades later they won't sleep soundly, and will always have to watch their back. It's like prison.. almost... I just hope they find a bloody and painful death, all of those bastards.. and ideally public trials, for everyone to see where this idiotic caliphate and idea leads you

Anonymous said...

I hope they hold him as guest as long as possible and treat him with the same hospitality that Isis is famous for.