Tsarnaev the Fraud
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tried by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay rather than in U.S. federal court on charges related to the Boston Marathon bombing. Naturalized American citizenship obtained by fraud is revocable.
There is Supreme Court precedent for revoking naturalized citizenship based on swearing a false oath of allegiance. See Knauer v. United States (1946); Perez v. Brownell ("Of course, naturalization unlawfully procured can be set aside."); and Fedorenko v. United States.
Moreover, during WWII, a German soldier who claimed naturalized U.S. citizenship but had gone back to Germany changed into civilian clothes after landing on U.S. soil from a German submarine with the intent of engaging in espionage and sabotage. The Supreme Court held in Ex Parte Quirin, that his claim of American citizenship and the right to trial in civil court was irrelevant to his confinement in a military brig as an unlawful belligerent in violation of the rules of war.
Back in the day, The New York Times opined that a military tribunal was the fitting venue for the Americans charged with conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. And so they were.
So far, the Obama administration hasn't announced when or where charges will be filed. The odds are that it will be a prolonged and costly civil trial in federal court with threats and disruptions to the city where a civil trial is held.
Seven months after becoming a U.S. citizen on Sept. 11, 2012, Tsarnaev faces charges of committing terrorist acts against "his" country, in addition to murder, mayhem, and numerous other felonies.
Are we to believe that it was after swearing his oath of "true faith and allegiance to the United States of America" not one year ago, that "Dzhokhar the Innocent" was brainwashed and provoked by his older brother, Tamerlan, into murdering, maiming and terrorizing fellow Americans?
More likely, the bombing was planned prior to Tsarnaev becoming a "citizen." He sought the privileges of citizenship to have an advantage in the event that he was captured and prosecuted.
Both Mother Jones.com and Forbes.com report that Tsarnaev maintained the Twitter account identified as "J_star." Consider his anti-American tweets prior to taking the oath of citizenship:
Just seven months before becoming naturalized Jahar @J_tsar posted on March 14, 2012, "a decade in America and I want out." There aren't any posts indicating a change of heart.
Ten days before swearing his "allegiance" to the U.S., Jahar @J_tsar tweeted on Sept. 1, 2012 came out as a "truther":
"Idk why it's hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess [f***] the facts y'all are some real #patriots #gethip.
Seven months after swearing allegiance to the United States, Tsarnaev lies in a Boston hospital with bullet holes from a gunfight with police who pulled him from a boat in a backyard where he was hiding. Eyewitnesses and videotapes link his cowardly terrorist acts from the bullets on Friday to the bombs in Boston on Monday.
As usual, we're hearing the liberal victimization meme that 19-year-old Tsarnaev, who drove a car over his brother, is just a regular American kid led astray while grieving over injustice in his homeland of Chechnya, and should be afforded all of the rights of citizenship.
Tsarnaev should be confined and interrogated in Gitmo as an illegal enemy combatant. His confinement should be defended against a writ of habeas corpus on that basis along with a complaint to revoke his fraudulent citizenship.
Jan LaRue is a Senior Legal Analyst for the American Civil Rights Union.