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Obama faces criticism from all sides for terrorism suspect’s offshore interrogation, civilian trialPAUL KORING WASHINGTON— Globe and Mail Update Last updated Thursday, Jul. 07, 2011 7:56PM EDT After holding a Somali terrorism suspect for two months on a U.S. warship, the Obama administration secretly flew him to New York for trial in a civilian court, leaving both rights groups and Congress infuriated. The clandestine imprisonment at sea echoed Bush-era – and widely condemned – efforts to deny detainees constitutional protections while interrogating them offshore. Meanwhile, opting to surreptitiously bring the Somali to a U.S. federal court not far from where...

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a piracy charge against six Somalis in the April attack on the USS Ashland naval ship in the Gulf of Aden. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson granted a motion by the defendants to dismiss the piracy charge. They still face other charges in the attack, in which one of their companions was killed. Jackson noted that the Somali attackers never attempted to board the Ashland. He ruled that the U.S. government failed to demonstrate that any attack on the high seas amounts to piracy.