President Barack Obama on Thursday asserted that the United States prefers to capture and detain terrorist suspects rather than have them killed.
The President said earlier in his speech at National Defense University that circumstances do not always permit the military to capture suspected terrorists, “despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists.” He returned to the topic later in the address.
“To repeat, as a matter of policy, the preference of the United States is to capture terrorist suspects,” Obama said, according to text of the speech as prepared for delivery. “When we do detain a suspect, we interrogate them. And if the suspect can be prosecuted, we decide whether to try him in a civilian court or a Military Commission. During the past decade, the vast majority of those detained by our military were captured on the battlefield. In Iraq, we turned over thousands of prisoners as we ended the war. In Afghanistan, we have transitioned detention facilities to the Afghans, as part of the process of restoring Afghan sovereignty. So we bring law of war detention to an end, and we are committed to prosecuting terrorists whenever we can.”
