Somali man held two months faces charges (Reuters)

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Somali man suspected of assisting al Qaeda was held abroad on a U.S. Navy ship for questioning for over two months without being advised of any legal rights, an administration official said.

The man, identified as Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was brought to New York City on July 4 to face charges in a U.S. criminal court.

He appeared in a New York court on Tuesday morning and pleaded not guilty to providing material support to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Somali group Al Shabaab, prosecutors in Manhattan said on Tuesday.

Warsame was arrested in April by the U.S. military in the Gulf, he was questioned about anti-terrorism "for intelligence purposes for more than two months" before being read his Miranda rights, the prosecutors said in a statement.

Miranda rights entitle suspects to a lawyer and the right to remain silent.

He was questioned by interrogators from the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group and the U.S. military, according to an administration official.

President Barack Obama's administration has come under fire by Republicans and even some fellow Democrats over his decision to prosecute some terrorism suspects in criminal courts and not in military courts, where rules for evidence are looser.

In Washington, another senior administration official said Obama's national security team had unanimously recommended the prosecution of Warsame in a criminal court.

The senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Senator Susan Collins, said she did not agree with this decision.

"A foreign national who fought on behalf of al Shabaab in Somalia - and who was captured by our military overseas - should be tried in a military commission, not a federal civilian court in New York or anywhere else in our country," she said in a statement.

LATER WAIVED RIGHTS

After his interrogation, a fresh FBI team came in and was permitted to talk with him, at which time he waived his legal rights and continued to talk for several days, said the first official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to talk on the record about matters of terrorism.

Warsame arrived in New York City late on July 4 after being formally arrested the previous day, according to a letter from prosecutors to the U.S. court.

Warsame, said to be in his mid-20s, was indicted on nine charges, including providing material support from at least 2007 to April 2011 to Somali militants al Shabaab and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), two groups designated by Washington as terrorist organizations.

According to the charges, Warsame also worked to broker a weapons deal with AQAP on behalf of al Shabaab.

A joint statement by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the New York Police Department said he was also charged with "conspiring to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives, possessing firearms and explosives in furtherance of crimes of violence and other violations."

(Reporting by Grant McCool and Basil Katz in New York and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; editing by Todd Eastham and Jackie Frank)

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Anti-terror law clears hurdle, faces objections (AP)

WASHINGTON – A tight deadline looming, the Senate on Monday advanced a four-year extension of the Patriot Act, the controversial law that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

Lawmakers voted 74-8 to debate and vote the legislation this week, before key provisions expire on Friday. President Barack Obama was in Europe, so any extension must pass the House and Senate, then be flown overseas and signed into law before the three provisions expire.

That would require uncommon speed for the deliberative Senate, where one member can delay or block legislation. And there were opponents: Senators of both parties said the law, designed after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, would give the government too much power.

The White House urged them to work it out — quickly.

"It is essential to avoid any hiatus" in the law's powers, the Obama administration said in a statement.

The legislation would extend three expiring provisions until June 1, 2015, officials said.

The provisions at issue allow the government to use roving wiretaps on multiple electronic devices and across multiple carriers and get court-approved access to business records relevant to terrorist investigations. The third, a "lone wolf" provision that was part of a 2004 law, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-U.S. individuals without having to show a connection between the target and a specific terrorist group.

From its inception, the law has been dogged by concerns that it represented a government power grab that could violate Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. The opposition came from an unlikely alliance of libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats seeking to limit the law's power.

Some Patriot Act opponents have suggested that Osama bin Laden's death earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the Patriot Act, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power.

"We were so frightened after 9/11 that we readily gave up these freedoms," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. "We really should sunset the entire Patriot Act and protect our liberties the way it was intended by our Founding Fathers."

But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

"We are not out of harm's way and no one should believe that," said the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Monday's tally cleared the Senate's 60-vote threshold to move forward with debate. Senate leaders huddled into the evening to get an agreement on which amendments would be considered, and for how long, in the shadow of the deadline. Officials said the bill would have to pass the Senate by Wednesday and be approved quickly by the House if were to be shuttled to Obama and signed before the provisions at issue expire.

Even before the test vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., proposed an amendment that closely tracked a bill his committee passed earlier this year with bipartisan support. Co-sponsored by Paul, the amendment would require that the use of national security letters — documents that allow the government to collect financial and other records — expire on Dec. 31, 2013, if not renewed by Congress.

The amendment also would require more public disclosure and oversight on the government's use of the letters, and it would cancel the one-year waiting period before a recipient of a letter can challenge a government order to keep it secret.

The Democrats who voted to block the Patriot Act extension were Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana as well as Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The Republicans who voted with them were Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Paul. Also voting no was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

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