For first time, military detainee in Afghanistan being transferred to US for criminal trial
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to transfer a military detainee in Afghanistan for criminal trial in Virginia, U.S. officials said Thursday.
The move would mark the first time a military detainee from Afghanistan was brought to the U.S. for trial, and it represents the Obama administration’s latest attempt to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects.
The prisoner, known by the nom de guerre Irek Hamidullan, is a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who defected to the Taliban and stayed in the country, U.S. officials said. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and U.S. soldiers in Khost province, officials said.
He has been held at the U.S. Parwan detention facility at Bagram airfield ever since. He faces up to life in prison on several charges relating to the 2009 attack, and faces trial in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the case would be tried, have handled several high-profile terror prosecutions including that of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
For teens with passports, travel to Syria — or anywhere else — can be surprisingly easy
PARIS — The teenage sisters told their father they were staying home sick from their suburban Denver school. Instead, they took $2,000 and their passports and headed off for Syria with a 16-year-old friend. They made it as far as Germany before border guards detained them for questioning.
The fact that adolescent girls could make their way across the Atlantic might come as a surprise to many parents, but a patchwork of laws and rules governing international air travel in many cases makes it easy for teenagers to travel with nobody’s permission but their own.
Airlines have a range of rules governing minors’ travel: Many major carriers including United Airlines and Scandinavian airline SAS place no restrictions on children older than 12, while others let even young minors travel as long as they are accompanied by someone older than 16. Yet others, including American Airlines, require a parent to accompany travelers younger than 15 to the gate, while those 15 and older face no restrictions.
Countries have a separate set of laws that is no less haphazard, from a Russian requirement for notarized parental permission to the U.S. system where adolescents with valid passports are free to come and go.
In Spain, both parents must fill out a permission form at a police station before a minor can travel alone. In Germany, where the American teens were stopped, border guards are required to verify that minors have parental permission to travel.
Jerusalem mayor urges crackdown on unrest, vows to restore calm
JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s mayor on Thursday called for a crackdown against a wave of Palestinian unrest, as police beefed up security after a Palestinian motorist with a history of anti-Israel violence slammed his car into a crowded light rail train station and killed a baby girl.
The crash Wednesday night escalated already heightened tensions in east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.
Since the summer, Palestinian youths have clashed frequently with Israeli police, thrown stones and firebombs at Israeli motorists and disrupted service of the city’s light rail train — a service meant to unify the city.
In an interview, Mayor Nir Barkat said the violence has become intolerable, and he vowed to restore order.
“Yesterday what we saw is another higher level, of people running over a 3-month-old baby,” he told The Associated Press. “We must fight violence and we will win that war.”
By wire sources
