President Obama Has a Secret Prison on a Navy Ship

The U.S. military secretly captured a terrorism suspect in the Gulf of Aden in April and detained him for more than two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship before flying him to New York City on Tuesday and indicting him on federal terrorism charges.

The operation indicates a new willingness by the Obama administration to capture and interrogate terrorism suspects outside war zones, U.S. officials said.

The Somali suspect, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was questioned by military interrogators before he was read his rights in June and turned over to federal law enforcement officials aboard the ship for additional questioning. Federal officials charged him with nine counts of terrorism-related offenses, according to the indictment unsealed in federal court Tuesday in New York.

U.S. officials said Warsame and another individual, who was later released, were apprehended while aboard a boat traveling from Yemen to Somalia.

The operation comes amid a major escalation of clandestine U.S. operations against al Qaida-linked groups in Yemen and Somalia, including strikes and patrols by armed U.S. drone aircraft.

The arrest and indictment of Warsame also represent a potentially significant change of direction for the Obama administration, which condemned and dismantled secret CIA detention facilities and other counterterrorism programs that were approved by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But the federal charges brought in the Southern District of New York also indicate a desire on the part of the administration to try terrorism suspects in U.S. civilian courts. “After taking a very careful look at our options, it became clear to us that the federal courts had jurisdiction to try Warsame for terrorist-related offenses,” a senior administration official said.

The official said that jurisdiction for military commissions, which are being used to try detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was “relatively limited” compared with that of federal courts. Flying Warsame secretly to New York also allows the administration to bypass congressional objections to bringing terrorism suspects to this country for civilian trials.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/05/v-print/2301141/somali-terror-suspect-who-...