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Prisoner Swap Opens Way for U.S. to Prosecute Terrorists Who Slew U.S. Citizens

(New York Sun) Nathan Lewin - On Aug. 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi, a member of Hamas, drove a suicide bomber to the Sbarro restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem, where the bomber blew himself up, killing 15 people including Judy Greenbaum, an American citizen from New Jersey. On March 5, 2003, Abigail Leitel, 14, from New Hampshire, was killed, along with 14 Israelis, by a suicide bomber on a Haifa bus plotted by three Hamas members: Fadi Muhammad al-Jabaa, Maedh Abu Sharakh, and Majdi Muhammad Amr. On Sep. 9, 2003, a Hamas suicide bomber slew seven people including American citizens David and Nava Applebaum at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem. Ibrahim Dar Musa helped plan that bombing. The perpetrators of each of these murders of Americans are now free and living in Jordan or Gaza because Hamas demanded that they be released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Since the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, it has been a capital crime under American law to "kill a national of the United States, while such national is outside the United States." No statute of limitations precludes prosecution of old offenses. Another law, passed in 1994, made it a federal crime to use an explosive bomb "against a national of the United States while such national is outside of the United States." The Department of Justice should now indict, extradite, and put to trial in U.S. courts, under American law, these killers of American citizens. The writer was a federal prosecutor and served as deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
2011-11-11 00:00:00
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