Graham released a statement with several Republican lawmakers. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Graham: 'Enemy combatant'

Several Republican lawmakers are calling for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings to be tried as an enemy combatant, rather than as an ordinary criminal.

“It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city,” read a Saturday statement from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans. The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent.”


Their statement came after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody and sent to the hospital Friday night. The suspect had earlier spurred a Boston-wide lock-down as authorities searched for him Friday. His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died earlier in clashes with authorities. The lawmakers argued that a criminal trial would move slowly at a time when information is needed fast.

“We should be focused on gathering intelligence from this suspect right now that can help our nation understand how this attack occurred and what may follow in the future. That should be our focus, not a future domestic criminal trial that may take years to complete,” they said.

King told POLITICO on Saturday that Tsarnaev was operating on a “battleground.”

“America is part of the battleground,” he said. “If you capture someone on the battleground, they should not be given the privilege of a civilian trial where they are given different rights. He’s going to be convicted one way or another. My concern is intelligence we can get from him, whether other people were involved, whether he’s dealt with other Islamist terrorists in the past, is there a Chechen base overseas [the Tsarnaev family is from Chechnya], [ties] to the Mideast, other cells?

“The only way to get that is through extensive, intensive interrogation,” he continued, adding that his “real concern is whether there are other sleepers around.”

The Republican national security hawks cheered a law enforcement call to not read Tsarnaev his Miranda rights after he was apprehended under the public safety exception, but they said that might not go far enough, noting that “The public safety exception is a domestic criminal law doctrine that allows questioning of a criminal suspect without Miranda warnings for a limited time and purpose.”

“A decision to not read Miranda rights to the suspect was sound and in our national security interests,” they said. “However, we have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake. It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect.”

The lawmakers argued that the United States faces major challenges posed by “radical Islamists.”

“We continue to face threats from radical Islamists in small cells and large groups throughout the world,” they said. “They have, as their primary focus, killing as many Americans as possible, preferably within the United States. We must never lose sight of this fact and act appropriately within our laws and values.”

They urged the Obama administration to classify Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.

President Barack Obama offered a possible nod to that issue in his televised address Friday night, saying that “it’s important that we do this right.”

“That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts. That’s why we have courts,” Obama said.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blasted the notion of trying the suspect as an enemy combatant, saying in a statement that doing so could cause problems for the prosecution.

“I am not aware of any evidence so far that the Boston suspect is part of any organized group, let alone al Qaeda, the Taliban, or one of their affiliates — the only organizations whose members are subject to detention under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as it has been consistently interpreted by all three branches of our government,” he said in a statement. “In the absence of such evidence I know of no legal basis for his detention as an enemy combatant.

“To hold the suspect as an enemy combatant under these circumstances would be contrary to our laws and may even jeopardize our efforts to prosecute him for his crimes,” he continued.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Saturday urged the administration to “resist” those who want to designate Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.

“The Administration should resist hasty calls to treat the suspect as an enemy combatant,” he said in a statement. “This is not a foreign national caught on an enemy battlefield, but an American citizen arrested on American soil. The Justice Department has demonstrated a far greater ability to successfully prosecute suspected terrorists in federal courts than the military commissions have thus far been able to show. Nothing must be done to compromise the public safety, the ability of prosecutors to seek justice for the victims or our constitutional principles.”

Graham and McCain released an earlier statement Friday that emphasized their concerns over threats posed by “radical Islam.”

“Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks,” they said in a statement. We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama Administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.”