Al-Qaida terror suspect brought to U.S. for trial

PHILADELPHIA — The Trump administration has brought an al-Qaida suspect to the United States to face trial in federal court, backing off its hard-line position that terrorism suspects should be sent to the naval prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, rather than to civilian courtrooms.

The suspect, Ali Charaf Damache, was transferred from Spain and appeared Friday in federal court in Philadelphia, making him the first foreigner brought to the United States to face terrorism charges under President Donald Trump. The authorities believe Mr. Damache was an al-Qaida recruiter. He was charged with helping with a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has repeatedly said that terrorism suspects should be held and prosecuted at Guantánamo Bay. Mr. Sessions said that terrorists did not deserve the same legal rights as common criminals and that such trials were too dangerous to hold on American soil. With Mr. Damache’s transfer, Mr. Sessions has adopted a strategy that he vehemently opposed when it was carried out under PresidentBarack Obama.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about whether Mr. Sessions had changed his views on civilian trials or why Mr. Damache was being brought to federal court.

For years, Republicans portrayed civilian trials as a weakness in Mr. Obama’s national security policy. His plan to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in Manhattan fizzled amid controversy. Since then, however, federal prosecutors have consistently won convictions and lengthy prison sentences for foreign terrorists and helped glean crucial intelligence.

Mr. Damache’s transfer represents a collision of the Trump administration’s tough rhetoric and the reality of fighting terrorism in 2017. Though Mr. Trump has promised to fill Guantánamo Bay with “bad dudes,” nations worldwide, including America’s most important allies, have come to regard the prison there as a legal morass and a symbol of American mistreatment.