WASHINGTON (AP) — Instead of sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay or secret CIA "black" sites for interrogation, the Obama administration is questioning terrorists for as long as it takes aboard U.S. naval vessels.

And it's doing it in a way that preserves the government's ability to ultimately prosecute the suspects in civilian courts.

That's the pattern emerging with the recent capture of Abu Anas al-Libi, one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, long-sought for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. He was captured in a raid Saturday and is being held aboard the USS San Antonio, an amphibious warship mainly used to transport troops.

Questioning suspected terrorists aboard U.S. warships in international waters is President Barack Obama's answer to the Bush administration detention policies that candidate Obama promised to end. The strategy also makes good on Obama's pledge to prosecute terrorists in U.S. civilian courts, which many Republicans have argued against. But it also raises questions about using "law of war" powers to circumvent the safeguards of the U.S. criminal justice system.

By holding people in secret prisons, known as black sites, the CIA was able to question them over long periods, using the harshest interrogation tactics, without giving them access to lawyers. Obama came to office without a ready replacement for those secret prisons. The concern was that if a terrorist was sent directly to court, the government might never know what intelligence he had. With the black sites closed and Obama refusing to send more people to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it wasn't obvious where the U.S. would hold people for interrogation.

And that's where the warships came in.

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FILE - This file image from the FBI website shows Anas al-Libi, an al-Qaeda leader connected to the …

On Saturday, the Army's Delta Force and Libyan operatives captured al-Libi in a raid. A team of U.S. investigators from the military, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department has been sent to question him on board the San Antonio, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The San Antonio was in the Mediterranean as part of the fleet preparing for now-canceled strikes on Syria last month.

Al-Libi, who was indicted in 2000 for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, was being held on the warship in military custody under the laws of war, which means a person can be captured and held indefinitely as an enemy combatant, one of the officials said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

As of Monday, al-Libi had not been read his Miranda rights, which include the rights to remain silent and speak with an attorney. And it was unclear when al-Libi would be brought to the U.S. to face charges.

"It appears to be an attempt to use assertion of law of war powers to avoid constraint and safeguards in the criminal justice system," said Hina Shamsi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and the director of the civil rights organization's national security project. "I am very troubled if this is the pattern that the administration is setting for itself."

The Obama administration publicly debuted the naval ship interrogation tactic in 2011 when it captured Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali citizen who the U.S. government said helped support and train al-Qaida-linked militants. Warsame was questioned aboard a U.S. warship for two months before he went to New York to face terrorism charges. He pleaded guilty earlier this year and agreed to tell the FBI what he knew about terror threats and, if necessary, testify for the government.

The White House would not discuss its plans for prosecuting al-Libi.

Who Was Militant Nabbed by US in Libya?Play video."

"As a general rule, the government will always seek to elicit all the actionable intelligence and information we can from terrorist suspects taken into our custody," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Monday.

The interrogators sent to question al-Libi are part the same group that questioned Warsame — the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. The Obama administration created the group of interrogators in 2009 to juggle the need to extract intelligence from captured suspected terrorists and preserve evidence for a criminal trial.

Under interrogation, Warsame gave up what officials called important intelligence about al-Qaida in Yemen and its relationship with al-Shabab militants in Somalia. Because those sessions were conducted before Warsame was read his Miranda rights, the intelligence could be used to underpin military strikes or CIA actions but were not admissible in court. After that interrogation was complete, the FBI stepped in and started the questioning over in a way that could be used in court.

After the FBI read Warsame his rights, he opted to keep talking for days, helping the government build its case.

Al-Libi's case is different from Warsame's in that he already has been indicted for allegedly conducting "visual and photographic surveillance" of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi that was attacked in 1998. Warsame was indicted after he was questioned aboard the naval ship.

The ACLU's Shamsi said it's a good thing that al-Libi was not being held secretly, as was the policy during the Bush administration. But, she said, al-Libi should be entitled to counsel and a speedy trial.

Terror Secrets: Inside the Interrogation RoomPlay video."

While prisoners have a right to a speedy trial, there's no reason the U.S. needs to rush al-Libi to court. That's because in 2010 U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the government could prosecute al-Qaeda suspect Ahmed Ghailani in New York, despite holding him for five years in CIA and military custody. Kaplan said the delay didn't violate Ghailani's speedy-trial rights because the government has the authority to detain suspects during wartime. Kaplan is also the judge in al-Libi's case.

The Obama administration has said it can hold high-value detainees on a ship for as long as it needs to. During his confirmation hearing in June 2011 to be the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Adm. William McRaven said the U.S. could keep a detainee on a ship for as long as it takes to determine whether the U.S. could prosecute the suspect in civilian court or whether the U.S. could return the suspect to another country.

"This situation, like the one with Ahmed Warsame two years earlier, is a hybrid model in which military detention under the laws of war is used to facilitate short-term interrogation, and then combined with civilian criminal prosecution in order to take the person off the streets for the long term," said Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who tracks terrorism issues.

"The hybrid approach is not always available," he said. "But it can be the perfect approach in the right circumstances."

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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Nedra Pickler, Pete Yost and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.

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Follow Eileen Sullivan on Twitter at http://twitter.com/esullivanap


Why U.S. is holding terror suspects at sea

Detainees like Abu Anas al-Libi are being questioned aboard U.S. warships in international waters.
Alternative to CIA 'black' sites

Seoul (AFP) - South Korea's spy agency confirmed Tuesday that the North has restarted an aging plutonium reactor that could help boost its nuclear weapons programme.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a report to parliament that the five megawatt reactor at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex had resumed operations, according to a joint briefing by ruling and opposition party lawmakers.

The report was presented at a closed intelligence committee session, lawmakers told media.

The spy agency declined to comment on the report.

It followed speculation by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that North Korea had restarted the reactor.

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The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre in North Korea, seen in a satellite image taken on A …

`A commercial satellite image taken on September 19 showed the plutonium reactor releasing hot waste water into a river through a new drainpipe, the think tank said last week.

An image from late July had not shown any sign of hot water discharge, however, indicating a recent relaunch.

In reports released last month, the institute and another Washington think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, observed steam coming from the reactor.

The drainpipe is critical to maintaining a safe temperature at the reactor. North Korea knocked down a cooling tower in 2008 to show its commitment to a US-backed aid-for-disarmament deal.

Pyongyang carried out its third nuclear test in February, sparking international condemnation and raising tensions on the Korean peninsula for months.

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Unused fuel rods stacked in a warehouse at North Korea's nuclear complex in Yongbyon, in a photo tak …

Two months later, it boasted that it would restart all facilities at Yongbyon to bolster its atomic arsenal.

Russia has warned that the resumption of Yongbyon could lead to catastrophe. The reactor, a source of great national pride and international anxiety over its role at the heart of North Korea's nuclear ambitions, was built in 1986 and is outdated.

"Our main concern is linked to a very likely man-made disaster as a consequence. The reactor is in a nightmarish state, it is a design dating back to the 1950s," a Russian diplomatic source told Interfax news agency last month.

"For the Korean peninsula this could entail terrible consequences, if not a man-made catastrophe."

The United States and South Korea have also voiced concern, with evidence of the reactor's restart reinforcing scepticism over North Korea's statements that the communist state is ready to return to negotiations.

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FILE - The combination of these three file satellite images taken, from left, March 20, June 24 and …

The NIS report also showed that the North had tested a long-range rocket engine, the lawmakers said.

The US-Korea Institute, citing satellite images, said separately in September that North Korea was believed to have tested a long-range rocket engine at its Sohae satellite launching station.

While the exact engine type could not be identified, possibilities included the second stage of the Unha-3 Space Launch Vehicle, or the second or third stage engine of a much larger rocket under development, it said.

Analysis of before and after satellite photos indicated the test had taken place sometime between August 25 and 30, it said.

Sohae was the base for the successful launch of the Unha-3 rocket in December -- an event condemned by the West as a disguised long-range ballistic missile test that violated UN resolutions.

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North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility. Russia has warned of a potential "man-made catastrophe" if …

The confirmation from South Korea lawmakers backs an earlier claim from a U.S. think tank.
Warning from Russians

Call them the shut-down rebels: Individuals, businesses, cities and state agencies that are defying federal orders to shut down and go home. They are taking a page from the playbook of veterans who last week ignored "closed" signs at the WWII Memorial and--figuratively speaking—jumped the barricades.

In North Carolina, Bruce O'Connell on Friday defied U.S. Park Service orders telling him to close down his inn and restaurant. O'Connell and his 90-year-old mother own thePisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway southwest of Asheville. Though the Inn is private, it sits on federal park land and is thus subject to Park Service orders.

When the government pronounced the park closed and last week ordered him to close up shop at the height of the fall foliage season, O'Connell at first complied and closed.

Then, though, he started getting angry.

Some news reports say it was the example of the rebellious veterans that prompted him to act, but he tells ABC News it was something more.

CONGRESS' PATH TO FEDERAL SHUTDOWN

"It was a result of my having spent 35 years trying to work with the federal government, of my having been intimately involved as a contractor with the Secretary of the Interior and the Park Service. I've witnessed first-hand the process getting more and more dysfunctional over the decades."

Being told he had to close—because of the government's wrangling--was the last straw, he says. "I'd just reached my breaking point." He asked himself: "If not now, when; and if not me, who?"

So, on Friday, he re-opened. By Saturday, however, he was closed again—at the Park Service's insistence, enforced by armed rangers.

Sunday he posted a message on the Inn's website : "We have ceased operations. I am furious all over again. Rangers are guarding our parking lot 24/7 keeping visitors out. It is downright scary. What the heck is going on and how are we all allowing it? I call for action now. Enough is enough." Had the government allowed him to remain open, he says, he would have paid more than $30,000 to the federal government in October.

Asked where things stand now, he says simply, "We are closed. There are armed guards blocking access to my parking lot. Anybody who tries to get in, they get in front of them and tell them that they can't." He's asked the guards how long they intend to stay. "They told me: until we're 100 percent sure you won't re-open."

That could be a long wait, according to the angry innkeeper. He's gotten huge support from the local community, he says, and sympathetic emails are pouring in literally from all over the world. "I've gotten thousands of them," he says, "from here to Tokyo." Their message has been the same. "They all say: fight tyranny," he says.

Moving forward, he intends to take "every legally appropriate action." He is filing today for a temporary restraining order and will seek an injunction." With an injunction, he says, he could re-open until a court decides in his favor or the government's.

He's not the only one who doesn't want to fold his tent.

At Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in central Idaho, park employee Ted Stout has defied the shutdown to continue searching—on his own time and without pay—for a missing 63-year-old hiker. Stout told the Globe and Mail he and fellow workers would press on, despite deteriorating weather—and despite the federal furlough.

In Wisconsin, Cathy Stepp, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), has rejected a Park Service demand to close some state parks that receive partial funding from the federal government. She tells USA Today, "While things work their way out in Washington, we need to make sure we are doing everything we can here. Sometimes we have to rise above, and get that work done."

MORE THAN GOVERNMENT WORKERS AFFECTED

Stepp's press representative did not respond to a request from ABC News for further comment.

A DNR press release explains that although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has closed, for example, a portion of the Horicon Marsh Wildlife Area, the DNR has elected to keep the rest of the area open. Stepp, in the release, urges hunters and naturalists, hikers and bikers to "get out and enjoy the 1.5 million acres of state-owned land in Wisconsin" despite the shutdown.

Finally, Mayor Vincent Gray of the District of Columbia has figured out a way to ensure that all city employees will receive pay regardless of the budget impasse. He has sent the Office of Management and Budget a letter declaring, by fiat, that all their activities are essential, and thus excepted from any lapse in appropriations.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to keep up with our fueding politicians, check out our full coverage here.

Shutdown rebels defying orders to close

A growing number of government employees are refusing the federal requirement that they close up shop.
Inspired by rebellious vets