Terrorism

FBI spokesman Rich Wolf in Baltimore confirmed Thursday that the agency was investigating Mobley's case but wouldn't comment further. It wasn't clear why the Baltimore office was investigating, but it covers Delaware.

Michael Brothman of Vineland, N.J., said he graduated with Mobley from Buena Regional High School in 2002. He remembered Mobley boasting that he had a black belt in karate, being a fan of anime and being competitive in gym class. Mobley was also a member of his high school's wrestling team.

Campaign finance records show Mobley received $75 as an election day worker for Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign in 2005.

"I was kind of shocked when my friend called me about the news reports," Brothman said.

Dawn Bass, another classmate, told WMGM that Mobley was "a really nice kid" who liked to be the center of attention.

Working with U.S. intelligence officials, Yemen has stepped up its counterterrorism efforts lately, particular since the attempted Detroit attack. The suspect in the Detroit case, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, spent weeks in Yemen prior to his failed attack and has been linked to the country's al-Qaida branch.

Mobley was among 11 al-Qaida suspects detained this month after a security sweep in San'a, the capital, officials said. He was taken to the hospital over the weekend and apprehended after he attacked the guards in an escape attempt and barricaded himself in a hospital room, Albasha said.

Officials say he snatched a gun from one security guard and shot him, then made his way down from his fifth-floor room to the ground floor. Witnesses say he then got into a shootout with hospital security guards, who pinned him down until a unit of the anti-terrorism police apprehended him.

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Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo in Washington; Aaron Morrison in Trenton; Ben Nuckols in Baltimore; and Ahmed al-Hajj in San'a.

Whether we are at "war with terror" or at work destroying a ring of criminal terrorists, it makes sense, as a matter of national security, to use the right tool for the right job. Military commissions are not that tool. They are a legal experiment that the Supreme Court has rejected at every turn. Even presiding military Judge Col. Ralph Kohlmann derided the Guantánamo 9/11 proceedings as "a learning experience."

The commissions are now in their fifth incarnation. Hastily conceived after 9/11, they were repeatedly revised by Presidents Bush and Obama, and by Congress. Under the most recent version (the Military Commissions Act of 2009), the Department of Defense has yet to even devise rules for these proceedings. It remains unclear whether commission defendants could plead guilty to capital charges. In fact, no version of the commissions has ever tried a murder case to verdict, never mind a case approaching the importance and complexity of the 9/11 trial. If insanity is repeating the same act and expecting a different result, the attempt to install another commissions system is a textbook case.

Add to this uncertainty the constitutional cloud lingering over critical legal issues like the use of hearsay and evidence obtained through coercion, the legitimacy of using a war court for offenses that the Department of Justice concedes are not war crimes, and the adequacy of the to-be-determined trial procedures. These issues are unique to the military commissions, and they will provide convicted defendants with multiple grounds for appeals. The resolution of these issues will not be speedy. They will grind their way to the Supreme Court only after years of avoidable litigation.

This latest attempt to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic actually complicates the legal process. It adds a layer of appellate review that does not exist in Article III federal courts or military courts-martial. Before the D.C. Circuit or Supreme Court could entertain an appeal, a third, brand-new appellate court called the Military Commissions Court of Review would have to weigh in. And when the Supreme Court finally hears a challenge to the commissions' constitutionality, it may well overturn any conviction. If swift and certain justice is important to our national security, then using this Rube Goldberg-style system of criminal justice is ludicrous.

By contrast, federal courts are a constitutionally sound forum for prosecuting terrorists. There would be no threshold question about the court's legitimacy, no grounds for appeal challenging the fundamentals of the system. And compared to the glacial pace of military commissions, a federal court trial would proceed pursuant to established standards designed to move cases forward in an orderly fashion. Federal courts are not only capable of handling complex terrorism trials, they are better than military commissions at doing it.

According to a new report by the NYU Center on Law and Security, the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted more than 150 terrorism cases since 9/11, securing an average sentence of 16 years. As Colin Powell explained on "Face the Nation," the military commissions are a failure by comparison: "In eight years the military commissions have put three people on trial. Two of them served relatively short sentences and are free. One guy is in jail ... So the suggestion that somehow a military commission is the way to go isn't borne out by the history of the military commissions."

Professed concerns about leaks of classified information are a red herring. The 2009 Military Commissions Act adopted, nearly word for word, the same mechanism for protecting classified material used in federal court. Known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, these laws are time-tested and effective. An oft-cited but misinformed counterexample is that Osama bin Laden first learned that he was wanted by the U.S. from a document produced during a 1995 trial. As Eric Holder testified before Congress, that document was not classified, and prosecutors in that case did not attempt to protect the document from release by using CIPA. The strength and success of CIPA in federal court is precisely why Congress chose to adopt it for the military commissions.

The objection that a civilian trial would give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a soapbox from which to spew his hateful rhetoric is simply false. Federal judges have no patience for courtroom outbursts. Witness the federal trial of Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker. His outbursts and anti-American insults led the judge to revoke his status as a pro se defendant, effectively silencing him for the duration of his trial. By contrast, the military judge at Guantánamo once invited all five of the 9/11 defendants to give a five-minute tirade before the media and victims' families just to coax them into the courtroom.

In short, using our federal courts is being tough on terror. There is plenty of risk but no discernible benefit to trying the 9/11 defendants in an untested system. This trial should not be a "learning experience." Too much is at stake for our national security, our values, and our future.

Lt.Col. Darrel Vandeveld (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a former Guantánamo prosecutor.  Joshua Dratel, a federal criminal defense lawyer in private practice, represented Guantánamo detainee David Hicks and is currently an advisor to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on the representation of high-value detainees.

LaRose, who called herself JihadJane online, is "one of only a few such cases nationwide in which females have been charged with terrorism violations," said U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd.

LaRose, 46, of Pennsburg, Pa., has been held without bail since her Oct. 15 arrest in Philadelphia.

Authorities said the case shows how terror groups are looking to recruit Americans to carry out their goals.

"Today's indictment, which alleges that a woman from suburban America agreed to carry out murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face," said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.

LaRose had targeted Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks and had online discussions about her plans with at least one of several suspects apprehended over that plot Tuesday in Ireland, according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman wouldn't confirm the case is related to Vilks, who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.

The indictment charges that LaRose, who also used the name Fatima LaRose online, agreed to kill the target on orders from the unnamed terrorists she met online, and traveled to Europe in August to do so. Court documents don't say whether the person was killed, but LaRose was not charged with murder.

LaRose indicated in her online conversations that she thought her blond hair and blue eyes would help her move freely in Sweden to carry out the attack, the indictment said.

LaRose is a convert to Islam who actively recruited others, including at least one unidentified American, and her online messages expressed her willingness to become a martyr and her impatience to take action, according to the indictment and the U.S. official.

Killing the target would be her goal "till I achieve it or die trying," she wrote a south Asian suspect in March 2009, according to the indictment.

Her federal public defender, Mark T. Wilson, declined to comment Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Michael Levy said the indictment doesn't link LaRose to any organized terror groups. He would not comment on whether other arrests were expected.

In recent years, the only other women charged in the U.S. with terror violations were lawyer Lynne Stewart, convicted of helping imprisoned blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman communicate with his followers, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist found guilty of shooting at U.S. personnel in Afghanistan while yelling, "Death to Americans!"

But neither case involved the kind of plotting attributed to LaRose -- a woman charged with trying to foment a terror conspiracy to kill someone overseas.

Stewart has insisted she is "not a traitor," while Siddiqui has accused U.S. authorities of lying about her.

LaRose called herself JihadJane in a YouTube video in which she said she was "desperate to do something somehow to help" ease the suffering of Muslims, the indictment said. According to the 11-page document, she agreed to obtain residency in a European country and marry one of the terrorists to enable him to live there.

She moved to Europe in August 2009 with a U.S. passport stolen from a male friend and intended to give it to one of her "brothers," the indictment said. She hoped to "live and train with jihadists and to find and kill" the targeted artist, it said.

LaRose also agreed to provide financial help to her coconspirators in Asia and Europe, the indictment charged.

LaRose had an initial court appearance on Oct. 16 but didn't enter a plea. No further court dates have been set.

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Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this report.

As difficult as the politics are concerning how and where to try the most notorious terror suspect in U.S. custody, that's only one step toward the even more fraught and complicated goal of closing Guantanamo where Mohammed and nearly 200 other terror detainees remain.

Closing Guantanamo was a signature promise of Obama's presidency, and it is still unkept well past his original deadline of January. Failing to keep it would have huge implications for the president, both with his base of supporters in the Democratic Party and in his efforts to remake America's image around the globe.

Holder decided in November to transfer Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 terrorists from Guantanamo to New York City for civilian trials. City officials initially embraced the idea.

But they later reversed themselves, citing the enormous costs, security and logistics of hosting a 9/11 trial -- making things awkward for the Obama administration. And then the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing altered the political dynamic further, as Republicans focused anew on Obama's terrorism policies in general, including the trials.

The drumbeat of policy criticism, combined with the increasingly loud outcry from New York, made it nearly impossible for the White House to hold on to Holder's decision without review. That review is not finished, so no new recommendation is yet before the president. A decision is not expected for weeks, said a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss private deliberations.

But the recommendation almost certainly will be for a switch to a military process for the five accused men, said administration officials.

The reason for the probable reversal is simple: The more the trial controversy spun out of control, the harder it was becoming to make progress on other, already difficult issues crucial to closing Guantanamo, such as securing funding from Congress for the closure, arranging a replacement facility in the United States and planning other trials.

White House officials now see the Mohammed trial decision as the key to unlocking those logjams.

Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have proposed a ban on trying terrorism defendants in any American community.

The administration believes a civilian trial is doable, even preferable, as a demonstration of U.S. commitment to rule of law. Officials have cited the numerous terrorism trials held previously in U.S. criminal courts. They also argue that decisions on how to prosecute defendants are not for lawmakers to make.

But the White House also wants to move on.

As the Obama administration has been forced to defend its terrorism policies, the White House has taken control of the decision-making process on major terror trials and in negotiations with key lawmakers, all with greatly reduced input from the Justice Department.

In political terms, that could suggest Obama and his top aides have lost confidence in Holder for not having generated enough political support with local officials before making his decision to try Mohammed in New York. But privately White House aides blame New York officials' reversal and the heightened security fears that followed the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

If Obama does settles on a military commission for Mohammed and the others, he will face criticism from liberal Democrats. This was evident Friday even based on the hint of such a decision.

"If this stunning reversal comes to pass, President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values," said the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony D. Romero. "Even with recent improvements, the military commissions system is incapable of handling complicated terrorism cases and achieving reliable results. President Obama must not cave in to political pressure and fearmongering."

Donna O'Connor, a spokesperson for September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a national organization of more than 200 relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks, also bemoaned the potential choice. "Civilian trials in federal courts have resulted in hundreds of successful terrorism prosecutions whereas military commissions are an illegitimate system that undermine the rule of law," she said.

New York officials cheered, however.

"It makes absolutely no sense to hold a multiyear, almost billion-dollar trial in a community that had already grappled with Sept. 11 and is the financial capital of our country," said Julie Menin, who is chair of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan.

Regardless of reactions, the White House hopes the eventual decision will accomplish one import objective: moving beyond one controversy so Obama can tackle others.

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Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik in New York and Devlin Barrett in Washington contributed to this story.

In contrast to America's still-growing refusal to accord basic due process to accused Terrorists, consider how Pakistan treats foreigners whom it apprehends within its borders on serious charges of Terrorism:

SARGODHA, Pakistan -- Prosecutors seeking to indict five Americans on terror-related offenses presented their case to a Pakistani judge Tuesday, laying out charges including waging war against Pakistan and plotting to attack the country, a defense attorney said.

The men, all young Muslims from the Washington, D.C., area, were arrested in December in Punjab province not long after reaching Pakistan. . . . The men could be indicted on as many as seven charges during their next hearing on March 10, lawyer Hamid Malik told The Associated Press. The judge ordered the defense to review the prosecution report presented in the Sargodha town court and to prepare a rebuttal.

If there's any country which can legitimately claim that Islamic radicalism poses an existential threat to its system of government, it's Pakistan.  Yet what happens when they want to imprison foreign Terrorism suspects?  They indict them and charge them with crimes, put them in their real court system, guarantee them access to lawyers, and can punish them only upon a finding of guilt.  Pakistan is hardly the Beacon of Western Justice -- its intelligence service has a long, clear and brutal record of torturing detainees (and these particular suspects claim they were jointly tortured by Pakistani agents and American FBI agents, which both governments deny).  But just as is true for virtually every Western nation other than the U.S., Pakistan charges and tries Terrorism suspects in its real court system. 

The U.S. -- first under the Bush administration and now, increasingly, under Obama -- is more and more alone in its cowardly insistence that special, new tribunals must be invented, or denied entirely, for those whom it wishes to imprison as Terrorists (along those same lines, my favorite story of the last year continues to be that the U.S. compiled a "hit list" of Afghan citizens it suspected of drug smuggling and thus wanted to assassinate [just as we do for our own citizens suspected of Terrorism], only for Afghan officials -- whom we're there to generously teach about Democracy -- to object on the grounds that the policy would violate their conceptions of due process and the rule of law).  Most remarkably, none of this will even slightly deter our self-loving political and media elites from continuing to demand that the Obama administration act as self-anointed International Arbiter of Justice and lecture the rest of the world about their violations of human rights.

UPDATE:  This new ad -- from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's group "Keep America Safe" -- might truly be the most repellent and vile political ad of the last decade (h/t Ben Smith):

UPDATE II:  Many Guantanamo detainees, including numerous defendants accused of being Al Qaeda operatives, have been represented by military lawyers.  As but one illustrative example, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley waged a relentless (and ultimately successful) campaign to free Binyam Mohamed from Guantanamo despite accusations that he was an Al Qaeda Terrorist; meanwhile, Navy Lt. Commander Kevin Bogucki aggressively fights the Obama administration in an ongoing effort to secure the freedom of his client, Kuwait Guantanamo detainee Fouad Al Rabiah, who "has spent seven years at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he stands accused of conspiracy and providing material support to the Taliban and al Qaeda."  According to the "rationale" from those vile McCarthyites, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, these military lawyers should be deemed America-hating Terrorist sympathizers as a result of that work.  I'd like to hear those two say that these military lawyers are in league with the "Al Qaeda Seven."

My guest today on Salon Radio to discuss this case and its significance is Shane Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, counsel to the plaintiffs in this case.  The discussion is roughly 15 minutes in length and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.

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I'll be traveling for much of this week and posting may therefore be light or erratic.  As a reminder, I am appearing at several open-to-the-public events in New York City this week, including this event at NYU Law School (my alma mater) on Wednesday Thursday at 6:00 p.m., where I'll be interviewed about civil liberties and Constitutional matters in the Obama administration, and related issues, by NYU Law Professor Stephen Holmes, followed by a substantial Q-and-A session.  I am also participating in the truly excellent conference at the New School's entitled "Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy," where I'll be on two panels -- one on Thursday morning and the other on Friday evening -- and the panel schedule and ticket information is here.  From what I last heard, all tickets to the NYU event may be taken (though you should check if you're interested), while some tickets for the New School conference remain.

I'll also be doing several media appearances, and may not have time to post more specific information before I do them:  on Wednesday, I'll be on Dylan Ratigan's show (4:00 pm EST) and Rachel Maddow's show (9:00 pm EST), along with a GritTV panel with Daniel Ellsberg at noon (which can be viewed here); on Thursday morning, I'll be on Democracy Now sometime between 7-8:00 a.m. (live audio and video stream here); and on Friday morning, I'll be on Morning Joe, though I don't yet know the exact time.  I'll likely use my Twitter feed to post updates throughout the week.