Hoda Muthana

[Dill]

(02-21-2019, 11:44 PM)michaelsean Wrote: They aren’t required to charge you with treason. I’m sure there are s lot of factors that go into the decision.

Another idea just came into mind. Maybe it has some applicability to the Muthana case too.

In 2002, the US did not want to accord AQ and Taliban fighters the status of POWs, calling them rather "enemy combatants." 

To do that they could not regard them as armies of a legitimate state.

To charge John Walker Lindh with treason would have possibly affected the legal status of the Taliban and all other fighters by redefining the Taliban as the army of a state, their prisoners requiring Geneva protections and the like (including international inspections), which would mean sending them all home once the hot war was over rather than the indefinite detention desired.

Muthana might present a similar set of problems. It's hard to see what the legal consequences might be for future captives, so they want to avoid the problem altogether.  This continues to be a grey area for US law. Legally we only have a round hole and a square hole, but this peg is a triangle