Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy believes President Barack Obama may ship the notorious "Blind Sheikh" — convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — back to the Middle East before the end of his second term.
"Afghanistan has in the past said that they would take him back and I believe there are other Islamist countries that would be willing," McCarthy said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"[It] is something the State Department has talked about with Egypt from time to time."
But McCarthy said Egypt, which has a new government, would now be unlikely to house the terror chief.
"That's the only silver lining we have there … I don't think Egypt would be [willing], which is a credit to Egypt more than anything else," he said.
It was McCarthy who, as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, successfully prosecuted Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others for seditious conspiracy, in connection with the World Trade Center bombing that predated 9/11 by eight years.
Abdel-Rahman is now serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.
The comments by McCarthy — a columnist and senior fellow at National Review, and author of
"Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama's Impeachment", published by Encounter Books — follow the controversial release from Guantanamo Bay last week of Ali Saleh al-Marri, an al-Qaida operative.
"[He] was sent here in the aftermath or for the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks directly by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was then the operational kind of director of terrorism operations for al-Qaida — but his role was to participate in a second wave of post-9/11 attacks," McCarthy said.
"He is the only alien who was captured in the United States and held as an enemy combatant here. Most of the other alien enemy combatants were apprehended overseas and detained at Guantanamo Bay.
"[Last] Friday, he was sent to Qatar as a result of what they're calling the early termination of his sentence — really a gross error that was made here."
McCarthy said that error — "or I guess maleficence would be a better word" — occurred six years ago when the Obama administration moved him from "law of war" status as an enemy combatant into the civilian criminal justice system.
"[That's] because his case was of such importance to progressives who are against the Bush/Cheney 'law of war' approach to counter terrorism. He was moved into the civilian criminal justice and then given what was a very irresponsible plea deal that allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge," McCarthy said.
"Under his sentence, he got an eight year sentence in 2009. Basically the judge gave him credit for the time he'd already served which by then was about eight years at Guantanamo Bay — but if you're talking about a guy who should've gotten life in prison, that's kind of beside the point.
"I predicted in 2009 … that he'd do about six years in jail and sure enough as soon as he hit the six-year mark they'd cut a deal with Qatar and he's gone."