Maybe they arrested my neighbor because he was a major cog in the "terrorist" plan and if I want TRUE security I should not ask any questions.
It all depends on the scenario, I guess. If an American citizen, then one is entitled to all the rights that citizenship provides him/her. This was haggled out in the Padilla case where he actually went overseas to be trained as Al Qai'da operative and the line between being an American citizen and an illegal combatant has been blurred.
For example, there were Germans who were born in the US, and thus, US citizens, but they fought for the Nazis. Should they have been held as POWs, or tried for treason upon their capture. Traditional law would hold that, by joining the German army, they had effectively renounced their US citizenship and held their German citizenship to be pre-eminent.
But since the laws were written to be interpreted on the basis of national loyalty, they really don't effectively apply to non-state terrorist organizations. Yet, terrorist organizations are not actually purely "criminal" entities, but political organizations operating as supra-national entities (afterall, the agenda of Al Qai'da is global jihad).
So I would say that if your neighbor were detained, the FBI (which would execute the raid) would find itself in a jurisdictional debate with DOD as to who should control his detention and whether he/she were tried in a Federal court, or via military tribunal.
But I think you need to re-adjust your perception of law-enforcement. There are considerable "checks and balances" built into the system. So if your neighbor is just involved in criminal activities, you'll eventually hear and see the trial. But if they are part of an international terrorist entity, then national security considerations must be taken into account as well. And under this NS umbrella will be numerous classified operations that will seek to exploit your neighbors knowledge so that they can unravel and destroy the overall network.
Hawk |
