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| Under plan, intelligence agencies would be consulted before reading of rights | |
| 2010-02-13 | |
| The Justice Department and the FBI will consult with the intelligence community on information about terrorism suspects arrested in the United States before deciding whether to read them their Miranda rights under a plan now under review in the White House, according to senior administration officials. The proposal follows a controversy over the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and who was read his constitutional rights 10 hours after his arrest. Some law enforcement officials have expressed concern that public pressure is pushing the White House to establish new standards based on the Detroit incident, even though the nature of the case might be unique. One senior law enforcement official pointed out that authorities had immediate access to Abdulmutallab's passport and to background information on him that had only recently been entered into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. "But what if that person has a false passport and fingerprints are not in our files?" the official said, adding that it takes time just to get an identification, and U.S. law sets tight time rules for when someone who has been arrested must appear before a judge. "How can you have meaningful consultation [within government agencies] when you don't have a good handle on facts and when the clock is ticking?" Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said he does not think new administration protocols will solve the problem of the treatment of terrorism suspects. "This attempt to finesse it is not going to fix it," he said. "A captured high-value al-Qaeda member should be immediately placed in military custody and should be immediately interrogated vigorously in a sustained interrogation." Although Sessions and others have recommended that terrorism suspects arrested on U.S. soil be immediately put into military custody, such an action could take place only if the suspects are found to be enemy combatants.
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| Posted by:Gleresh Thamp8214 |