America's Floating Prisons

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/americas-floating-prisons/373577/

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The USS San Antonio (James DeAngio/U.S. Navy

Right now, a suspected terrorist is sitting in the bowels of a U.S. Navy warship somewhere between the Mediterranean Sea and Washington, D.C. Ahmed Abu Khattala, the alleged leader of the September 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, is imprisoned aboard the USS New York, likely in a bare cell normally reserved for U.S. military personnel facing disciplinary action at sea. En route to the United States for more than a week, he’s being questioned by military and civilian interrogators looking for critical bits of intelligence before he’s read his Miranda rights, formally arrested, and transferred to the U.S. District Court in Washington, where he’ll face trial. Meanwhile, the sailors aboard are going about the daily business of operating an amphibious transport ship—even as the ship’s mission has been redefined by the new passenger in their midst.

This isn’t the first time the Navy has played such a critical, curious, and largely under-reported role in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. In 2011, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a military commander for the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab, was captured aboard a fishing boat in the Gulf of Aden and detained by the Navy, on the high seas, for two months. In 2013, Abu Anas al-Libi, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 terrorist attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was held aboard the USS San Antonio—an identical ship to the one being used this week. Both men were interrogated at sea before being flown to the United States to face criminal charges in federal courts. Warsame eventually pleaded guilty to nine counts, including providing material support to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and teaching other terrorists how to make explosives. Al-Libi pleaded not guilty to terrorism-related charges, and his case is ongoing.

In many ways, it’s not surprising that the U.S. government has been turning Navy assets into floating prisons for these dangerous men. Taking the slow route back to the United States offers interrogators the time and space to gather crucial intelligence from high-value sources like al-Qaeda-linked operatives. During the two months that Warsame was at sea, a select team of FBI, CIA, and Defense Department officials, part of the Obama administration’s High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, questioned the Somali terrorist on “all but a daily basis.” He was cooperative throughout and some reports suggest that subsequent U.S. counterterrorism operations, including a drone attack in Somalia shortly after his capture, were a direct result of intelligence Warsame provided to authorities. While al-Libi was only detained at sea for about a week—a chronic medical condition prevented him from being held on a ship for an extended period—reports suggest that similar intelligence-collection efforts were underway in his case as well.