Pres. Obama or Attorney General Holder should announce that in the future, terrorism suspects will be treated not as criminals but as enemy detainees.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in custody in Michigan

From The New York Times:

The indictment of a Nigerian man on Wednesday for the attempt to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day has rekindled a debate over whether such terrorism suspects should be treated as criminals or as enemy detainees.

It is not clear whether the government could delay access to a lawyer for military detainees within the United States. The issue has not been tested because the government has not brought any new military detainees into the court system’s jurisdiction since the 2008 ruling on habeas corpus rights.

There is also no precedent for placing a suspected terrorist who was arrested on United States soil directly into military custody.

The Bush administration, for example, prosecuted in the civilian system both Richard C. Reid, who attempted to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb in December 2001, and Iyman Faris, who was arrested in 2003 in connection with an alleged Qaeda plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

President George W. Bush placed two other accused Qaeda members arrested inside the United States — Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri — in military custody. But both were initially held in the civilian court system, charged with crimes and given lawyers.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on Wednesday that he acknowledged that the Reid case was precedent for how the administration is handling Mr. Abdulmutallab.

But, he argued, it would be better for the government to place future such cases in a military system — in part, he said, to send a clear signal to the American people that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda.

“My expectation is that we will face more challenges like this in the future,” Mr. Hoekstra said. “This is not the last one.”