AFP
July 6, 2011

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House Wednesday defended the treatment of an alleged leader of Somalia’s Shebab Islamist insurgency who was interrogated for two months on a US warship, saying his detention was lawful.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

In the first known case of the secret detention of a terror suspect by the administration of President Barack Obama, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was captured in the Gulf on April 19 and kept aboard a US Navy ship at sea.

The Somali national was indicted on Tuesday in a New York court on charges of providing material support to both the Shebab and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the Islamist terror group.

Warsame, 25, “was detained lawfully, under the law of war, aboard a US Navy ship until he was transferred in the US for prosecution,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

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