I got into an argument with my roommate about whether or not there is a substantial threat to the United States and its citizenry attached to the plan to move suspected terrorists out of Gitmo and into stateside prisons. He expressed certain worries and, to justify them, used more than a few flimsy arguments along the lines of, "Part of the reason we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11 is because we aren't imprisoning terrorists in the US," and, "Various articles I read state that moving suspected terrorists to the US poses a not insignificant threat to us, and so my position is common sense." I dismissed these out of hand, of course, but another point he used to support his argument stuck with me.
According to him, terrorists in Italy were planning to state a prison break in order to free fellow terrorists that were being kept in an Italian prison. Furthermore, he says there are other instances within Europe of terrorists receiving instruction from imprisoned terrorists through clandestine means and, again, working to free their imprisoned colleagues. Needless to say, these supposed events all fly in the face of the argument I put forth, which is that terrorist cells are designed to operate independently and would never be in such dire need of instruction that they would seek it from incarcerated higher-ups, especially when communication carries a significant risk of exposure. That said, I don't recall ever hearing that a terrorist cell's plan to stage a prison break had ever been foiled by Italian authorities, nor have I ever heard of any terrorist cell working with incarcerated terrorists or working to free incarcerated terrorists. Frankly, I'm inclined to think he's lying.
I haven't been able to find anything on the vaguely described incidents he referenced, but I'm not willing to confront him unless I'm as certain as can be. It'd be pretty embarrassing if I was wrong, after all, and apart from that I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt until all doubt has been removed.
What I'm hoping for from you is validation of his claims or, if you're reasonably certain he's just making stuff up, some assurance that he's just a liar or perhaps deluded enough to be making up his own world history. Thanks.
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Belgium foils al-Qaeda jailbreak
edit: and this in the UK
I don't know about riots, but jails are often used as recruitment areas for all kinds of stuff, and radical islam is no exception. Some radical imams spew a lot of shit that people just ignore until it gets to be a problem. In Europe its a particular problem that has been brewing for the past few years, primarily in the UK and Germany.
Great, thanks for saving my face. It's possible he just got Italy mixed up with Belgium, I suppose.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
It's not like Penguin busting his guys outta Arkham.
In response to the Belgium link, it seems like there was no evidence of a planned jailbreak after all. No bombs or plans, and the suspects ended up being released without charges.
And the UK link is interesting, but I think it's worth pointing out that I don't really see how they could have made it to freedom after getting on the helicopter. I mean, what's more conspicuous than a getaway copter? You can't exactly sneak away after that.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
edit: googling "alqaeda jailbreaks in europe" into google has this thread on the first page.
Also, there was a plan to riot/escape in Australia and one that happened in the Philippines
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ah7wKhvgvo&feature=related
yeah, this is exactly what i was thinking as well. to perform a successful prison break, a foreign terrorist group would have to get into the country, formulate a plan that would actually successfully get them into and out of maximum security jails, acquire whatever funding and equipment their plan will need, actually manage to get to and through the jailbreak without being caught, and then flee our country which if i recall correctly is extremely large and crawling with cops.
this is a scenario that is mostly likely in 90s action movies. fortunately, steven segal also is highly likely in 90s action movies, so we're safe on that front.
as to whether or not it would increase the theoretical likelihood of attacks in an attempt to pressure for freedom for imprisoned comrades, well, why would it? i mean, it's no secret we had the prisoners at gitmo (and elsewhere). anyone who can read a newspaper knew that.
Gang members and such, yeah - but those guys are in with the general population of the prison. What exactly is leading people to believe that people from Gitmo are going to be mixed in with everyone else? That would lead to a shit-ton of shankings.
Here's an argument you can use with him if he keeps up this stuff. Even with his examples, it isn't really a reason to house them in off-shore gulags rather than the US. Doing so doesn't put us any more at risk, because it doesn't make us any more hated or more attractive a target for international terrorists - they hate us already. If anything, this would divert efforts from civilian targets to more hardened and secure security ones.
There does seem to be a genuine problem with regard to actual potential terrorists recruiting in jail, which is linked to the fact that the British prison system is massively overcrowded, so isolating people from the same group across a number of smaller prisons is impossible as the system is already overstrained with all the disturbances that result from overcrowding.
The second RAF generation was basically formed because the first generation was in prison and one of their goals was the freedom of the first generation. They had contacs to the imprisoned first generation through their lawyers. The lawyers even smuggled in hand guns for the first gen. to commit suicide with, when all attempts to free them failed.
Later the german Verfassungsschutz (a german Intelligence Agency) staged a fake prison break just to get undercover agents into the RAF.
So in Germany imprisoned terrorists not only communicated with others outside, but they planned attacks from the inside and even recruited new terrorists (through their lawyers). This was of course the special case of home-grown terrorism that had a huge amount of support in the student and/or left wing scene in Germany.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7904624.stm
What does this have to do with the state of US supermax prisons, and how terrorists will be kept there? Again, most of the issues people raise assume that they are going to be mixed in with the general prison population, which I strongly doubt will be the case.
I actually worked at work on Saturday. Also I went out on a date with a real life girl.
Can you like, permanently break the forums?
1. They felt that they wouldn't have to follow due process with the same attention to detail -- hearsay evidence would find wider acceptance, detainees would have fewer avenues to challenge their detention, anonymous sources and classified information could be used, etc. In short it would be easier to build a case.
2. Because the military had jurisdiction over our overseas detention center, military judges would sit on the cases, and the juries would be comprised of military service members. This made handling the sort of classified information that is inseparable from these cases easier to manage. Some also speculated that the cards would be further stacked against a defendant in a military court, although some cases have shown that military judges and juries can actually be quite lenient.
A lot of cases that emerged out of the Gitmo proceedings (chiefly Hamdi v. Rumsfeld) scuttled the military tribunal process by stating that the tribunals must comply with the Geneva conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It has since been suggested that since we don't get a due process pass when trying terrorism suspects overseas, we might as well bring them into the continental states and try them under Federal Law.
A lot of critics of this plan are making noise about how this is a bad idea, although most of their objections are red herrings. The real problem we're facing is that we will probably lose a lot of cases; because we never expected to have to extend due process rights of any sort to many battlefield detainees, we weren't as careful about how we built our cases. A lot of supposedly air-tight cases suddenly get eviscerated when you have to observe Federal rules of evidence and due process rights.
On an editorial note, the next time a Republican tells you that Obama's making America less safe, point out that if Bush and Cheney had erred on the side of caution and demanded that the DoJ/DoD build cases that could stand up to the scrutiny of a Federal court, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess in the first place.
The NIMBYism doesn't come from a distain for who would be tried in the courthouse, it comes from the fact that rapists and murderers don't belong to a organized movement bent on the destruction of the US. They fear that any courthouse or jail where detainees were tried or held would become target number one for whoever it is we're fighting against in the War on Terror(tm).
Strategically very deft. Tactically? A bunch of guys with guns in crowded public places trying to kill as many random people as possible before fighting to the death. I'd suggest that we should be more concerned about whomever planned the Mumbai attack than we ever were about the faces on Al Qaeda's videotapes because this fucker thinks about violence on a completely different level than Osama Bin Laden ever did. But he's not worrying about how to rescue the shooter captured by Indian security forces, and Al Qaeda's not particularly concerned with it, either.