Defense lawyers said that they would appeal.
Joshua Dratel, a lawyer for el-Hage, said that the appellate decision “would seem to say that the government’s invocation of national security can trump a US citizen’s constitutional rights across the board.”
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been a national debate over whether people accused of terrorism should be treated as criminals and tried in the federal courts, or held as enemy combatants to be tried, if at all, before military tribunals, where defendants have fewer rights and there is less public disclosure.
David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the ruling underscored “that we don’t need a specialized national security court; that we don’t need to depart from the traditional criminal justice system approach for prosecuting terrorists.”
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