You can’t accuse us of conspiracy to commit murder, because we were actually solders engaged in war. That’s the argument offered by a group of five Muslim men from Minnesota who were caught last year attempting to flee the country to become ISIS fighters. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

[The defendants] are asking a federal judge to drop murder conspiracy charges on grounds that they have “combatant immunity” under both common and international law. They say combatants are immune from criminal prosecutions for acts of war, including murder, against military targets. … “ISIL has engaged in atrocious acts,” attorneys for the five said in one motion. “But however one might describe it as an entity, it has an organized professional army engaged in traditional military warfare — an army with which the defendants are alleged to have intended to join in ‘combat.’ ” Federal prosecutors who brought the case argued in a court filing last month that the men were “grossly mistaken” in claiming ISIL fighters are combatants as part of a regularly constituted military force.

Regardless of how the case pans out, do we need any further evidence that ISIS is a declared enemy of the United States? They’re literally asking to be treated as such.

It’s ironic. On the one hand, you have folks advocating that terror suspects be treated like civilians and given criminal trials with full constitutional rights. On the other hand, you have these guys trying to dodge criminal prosecution by claiming to be non-civilian combatants. Which is it? It can’t be both.