East Turkestan Islamic Movement

9/11, Abu Ghraib, al Qaeda, al-Ajmi, Barack Obama, Debra Burlingame, detainees, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Kuwaiti 12, USS Cole, Yemen

Don’t Let Terror Win in Our Courts

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Two weeks ago, I was among a small group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims’ families who met with President Obama at the White House. Despite President Obama’s assurances that the safety and security of the American people is his number one priority, I left the meeting with little confidence that the President appreciates the grave consequences of shutting down Guantanamo or the complex problems associated with adjudicating detainee cases in the federal court system. Indeed, he told us that he is “not at all concerned” about the security issues of bringing the detainees to the U.S. His rationale for this is simple: whether detainees are held in a federal prison or a military facility, either location would present a “hard target” for future terrorist attacks aimed at freeing them. He believes the detainees will be forgotten by their fellow militants.

They will not be forgotten, however, by an army of elite defense lawyers who have declared that nothing less than a platinum standard of due process is acceptable for men who killed 3,000 innocent people, even if that means letting them and other dangerous terrorists go free. Indeed, the most real and immediate risk posed by bringing detainees to U.S. soil is that federal judges will do what al-Qaeda cannot: order that committed jihadists be released. Last year, in habeas corpus proceedings, a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslims who were training in Afghanistan with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to carry out terrorist attacks in mainland China. That case was recently reversed, but will no doubt be appealed. Does it make sense to release these individuals to suburban Virginia?

How will the federal courts handle evidentiary matters involving classified information being demanded by the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed representing himself? Will prosecutors be forced to disclose crucial battlefield intelligence or dismiss their cases?

The Pentagon has identified some 61 former detainees who have returned to the battlefield, among them Abdullah al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who carried out a suicide attack in Mosul that killed 12 Iraqi soldiers. Last September, al-Qaeda bombed the American embassy in Yemen, killing six people, including an 18-year-old Muslim-American teenager from upstate New York. That attack is believed to have been planned by a former detainee, now the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen and a graduate of Saudi Arabia’s terrorist “rehabilitation” program. Though touted by the U.S. State Department as a model program, Saudi Arabia has reached out to Interpol after losing track of some 85 admitted members of al-Qaeda, including 11 former Gitmo detainees.

Nearly 100 of the current detainees are from Yemen, a country whose president, who previously released two of the men responsible in the USS Cole attack, refuses to make guarantees that repatriated detainees will be prevented from engaging in future terrorist activities. Indeed, he recently released 170 admitted militants in furtherance of a truce with al-Qaeda.

President Obama made an important admission in that White House meeting with victims’ families. He said that, “the world saw what happened at Abu Ghraib and mixed that up with Guantanamo.” The detention center has become a symbol, he said, of American injustice, and “fair or not,” it has to be shut down. Going forward, the President has a solemn obligation not to allow the safety and security of the American people to be put at risk to correct a misperception elsewhere in the world, particularly when terrorism is a global problem. Nor should the President allow alien enemy combatants to propagandize our justice system simply to satisfy the same civil rights absolutists who will be first in line, as they were after 9/11, to decry the government’s institutional failures when the next catastrophic attack occurs.

The Supreme Court has affirmed the right of the United States to hold enemy combatants in preventative detention until the end of hostilities. We cannot expect our military to risk their lives fighting the enemy, then to risk them again to secure criminal evidence in the midst of war. Congress should step up and fulfill its responsibility to create a balanced, reasonable and consistent legal framework for trying detainee cases which recognizes that criminal courts, operating in a vacuum, can hurt us far more than world opinion.

It’s been said that the war on terror won’t be won on the battlefield. No, but if the ACLU has its way, it will be lost in the courts.

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Editor —

This commentary originally appeared in the Washington Post on February 21, 2009 as part of a series entitled ‘After Guantanamo’. If you go there, you will find a variety of related opinions, to incude this one by Colonel Lawrence Morris

Debra Burlingame, a former attorney, is co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America.

al Qaeda, Barack Obama, detainees, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, ETIM, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Taliban, Uighurs

Note to President Obama: 17 Uighurs at Gitmo legally inadmissible into U.S.

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President Barack Obama has often said that America should comply with the “rule of law.” While it would be a violation of federal law to allow the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo released into the United States, that is what lawyers and advocates are asking him to do in the wake of yesterday’s court decision, according to the Los Angeles Times:

The U.S. government may continue holding a group of 17 Chinese Muslims instead of releasing them in the United States, even though they are no longer considered dangerous, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in reversing an earlier decision. … The men are Uighurs, an ethnic group native to China’s vast western steppes that has occasionally sought autonomy from Beijing. They were detained near Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains shortly after the American invasion and later handed over to U.S. military officials.
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Uighur advocates said Wednesday that because the court ruled that the White House could not be forced to release the 17 men, the Obama administration should now move on its own to release them [emphasis added mine]. The ruling “in no way limits the ability of the executive branch to release the Uighurs on its own,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior policy counsel for the Constitution Project, a legal advocacy group. “We therefore call on President Obama to choose the right course.”

Section 103 of the Real ID Act of 2005 states that “any alien” who “has engaged in a terrorist activity” or “is a member of a terrorist organization” may not be admitted into the United States.

Two weeks ago, the Long War Journal reported:

During the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, the 055 Brigade served as “the shock troops of the Taliban and functioned as an integral part of the latter’s military apparatus,” al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote in Inside al Qaeda. At its peak in 2001, the 055 Brigade had an estimated 2,000 soldiers and officers in the ranks. The brigade was comprised of Arabs, Central Asians, and South Asians, as well as Chechens, Bosnians, and Uighurs from Western China.

Last August the LWJ also reported the results of its review of the 22 Uighurs originally held at Guantanamo:

All of the Uighurs at Gitmo have been associated with, or been members of, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (“ETIM”). … 20 of the 22 Uighurs detained at Gitmo were allegedly trained in an ETIM training camp and/or other facilities. At least 15 of the Uighurs detained at Gitmo have admitted that they received weapons training. The main training camp at which the Uighurs trained was reportedly sponsored by al Qaeda and the Taliban. … Some of the Uighur detainees are alleged to have fought in Afghanistan. … At least several of the Uighur detainees have ties to the ETIM’s senior leadership, which is, in turn, tied to the senior leadership of al Qaeda. … The ETIM, and Abdul Haq, remain a threat.

In 2002, our State Department designated the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist organization. More recently, both the United Nations and Pakistan have assigned that same designation to the group.

In addition, the Los Angeles Times also reported that, “In military tribunals at Guantanamo, many of the men said they saw themselves as allies of the U.S. against China. Several said they had traveled to Afghanistan for training to fight the Chinese.”

Regardless of whether President Obama agrees with the Uighurs and their lawyers, our federal law says those 17 detainees cannot be legally admitted into the United States.