Hoda Muthana

[Dill]

(02-22-2019, 12:44 PM)michaelsean Wrote: If I remember correctly, they don't have to be from a recognized state.  It can be a group that you are in armed conflict with.  Sort of like you can declare war against a group like we did with the Barbary pirates.

My guess is they weren't positive of a treason conviction so they took the sure thing, but that's completely a guess.

That's not very clear cut, though. We are in "armed conflict" with drug cartels, even working with state militaries of Mexico and Columbia, but if we catch one of our guys working with them, there is no pressure to call that treason, even if it involves a conspiracy to defraud the US.

The Barbary pirates are a good analogy, though in that case we were dealing with states, and I don't think Congress ever declared war in both our conflicts with those guys; in the first one the Pasha of Tripoli actually declared war on us. And prisoner status was not a big problem.

I think the difference might be that, unlike a drug cartel or a gang like MS, a "group" like the Taliban or ISIS or AQ is a political organization with political goals, and in conflict with the US AS A STATE. But we don't want to treat them as states for fear of how international law would regulate our handling of prisoners.  Guantanamo would have to go, or it is just a US Gulag, complicating our policing of human rights everywhere else (Like China and Russia).

Same issue arose with the extra-judicial killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Al Awlaki in Yemen. A similar (but not identical) issue hobbled Jackson when he wanted to clear the Cherokee out of Georgia, and didn't want a tribe defined as a "state."

Muthana's citizenship may activate the problem again here, so our Justice Dept. may not want a trial in the US.