Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain drew attention late last week by urging that the suspected terrorist (FYI: sorry for the vague wording, but I refuse to publish his name) be held as an enemy combatant:
In an interview, Mr. Graham acknowledged that if no evidence were to emerge linking Mr. Tsarnaev to Al Qaeda, then he should not continue to be held as an enemy combatant. But he argued that given the need to swiftly find out if Mr. Tsarnaev knew of other planned attacks or terrorist operatives, the government could and should hold him as a combatant while it searched for any such links.
“You can’t hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant, I agree with that,” Mr. Graham said. “But you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda — I think you have a reasonable belief to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn’t hold him for intelligence-gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable.”
Mr. Graham said 30 days of confinement and interrogation as an enemy combatant would be an appropriate amount of time to allow the government to look for evidence that would justify his continued detention under the law of war. He also said he believed that federal judges would grant the government that amount of leeway.
