Washington’s handling of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame sends a clear message to any other alleged terrorists in the Obama Administration’s crosshairs: we will find out what you know first, and worry about justice later. It also confirms that the US Navy has an important new role in the age of global terrorism — that of floating prison and interrogation centre.
If these two aspects of the Warsame case recall the hypocrisies of Bush-era rendition, so they should. Two and a half years ago President Obama set out to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and restore American justice in the eyes of the world.
The goals were laudable, but since then he has faced exactly the same clash of ethical and national security priorities as his predecessor, and has been unable to resolve it.
One result is Mr Warsame’s strange odyssey from Yemen to New York via two months on an unnamed US warship. On the ship, he was questioned almost daily by military interrogators without being assigned a lawyer or read his rights, insofar as he had any. In the federal court system in Manhattan he suddenly has full representation and all the legal rights of a US citizen, as Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican, complained.
Mr McConnell claims that moving alleged terrorists on to US soil for a civilian trial somehow endangers national security. This is laughable, but so is the Administration’s claim that it can pump a suspect for intelligence on the high seas, then guarantee that person a fair trial on the US mainland without the first process contaminating the second.
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White House officials say the Geneva Conventions were observed with Mr Warsame. They also claim that a four-day interval after his military interrogation was enough to ensure that everything gleaned from the civilian questioning that followed should be admissible in court.
The truth is that having lost the battle to close Guantanamo Bay, Mr Obama, with an eye on his re-election bid, is determined not to send new inmates there. In the meantime he is cherry-picking from America’s largely incompatible military and civilian justice systems. Sooner or later he will have to choose between them.