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Islamic terrorist's treatment exposes Obama 'rendition' hypocrisy, critics say
Monday's announcement of a guilty plea by a Somali terrorist who was captured by the U.S. overseas offered opponents of President Barack Obama another chance to expose his hypocrisy, this time with regard to a program he and other liberal-left politicians condemned during the Bush administration: Rendition.A Somali national who admitted he was the liaison official between al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, and who later acted as a U.S. government informant and witness pleaded guilty to a number of U.S. terrorism-related charges, according to the Justice Department on Monday. The guilty plea was unsealed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame entered a guilty plea to a nine-count indictment charging him with providing material support to Al Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -- two designated foreign terrorist organizations by both the State and Treasury Departments -- as well as conspiring to teach and demonstrate the making of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), possessing firearms and explosive materials, and other offenses. Warsame originally pleaded guilty on December 21, 2011, before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan federal court as part of a cooperation agreement with the United States. The guilty plea was kept sealed until Monday, March 25, 2013. The 27-year-old Warsame was captured in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen by the U.S. military on April 19, 2011, and was renditioned and questioned at a hidden location for intelligence purposes for more than two months. The Warsame capture in essence is a case of rendition since he was held at an undisclosed location and interrogated by military and/or intelligence agents, according to former police detective and military intelligence officer Mike Snopes. "During Barack Obama's first week as commander in chief he was quick to issue an executive order that ended the CIAs rendition policy and use of black sites, in which the CIA operated a number of clandestine overseas prisons for terrorism suspects. Obama and other Democrats had been highly critical of the Bush administration's treatment of captured terrorists," Snopes explained. A few months after promulgating Obama's executive order, on April 9, 2009, then CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that the CIA no longer operated detention facilities and that the black sites were closed down, according to Snopes. "At the same time, however, the CIA was also maintaining a series of quasi-renditions in which cooperating governments maintained 'black sites' for the CIA agents to continue their interrogations," noted political strategist and attorney Michael Baker. "When news came out about Warsame's rendition, the media's silence was deafening and even the most far-left lawmakers were silent." Posted by: tipper 2013-03-26 |
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