NEW YORK, March 26 (UPI) -- A Somali man pleaded guilty to nine terrorism-related charges after being interrogated on board a U.S. Navy ship for two months, officials said.
Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a suspected leader of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabaab terror organization, was captured by U.S. special forces April 2011 off Africa's eastern coast, ABC News reported.
He was questioned aboard a nearby Navy ship for two months by the U.S. High Value Detainee Interrogation Group composed of experts from the CIA, FBI, Defense Department and other agencies. Prosecutors said Warsame was interrogated "on all but a daily basis by certain U.S. officials, who were acting in a non-law enforcement capacity."
Warsame began speaking with officials and arrived in the United States in July 2011. He pleaded guilty to nine terrorism-related charges in December 2011, federal officials announced Monday.
Vice Admiral William McRaven, the then-chief of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command, told a Senate committee in 2011 that holding terror suspects on board ships was not unusual, speaking out against criticism of Warsame's treatment.
"That is always a difficult issue for us," McRaven said. "In many cases, we will put them on a naval vessel and we will hold them until we can either get a case to prosecute them in U.S. court ... or we can return him to a third party country. If we can't do either one of those, then we'll release that individual and that becomes the unenviable option, but it is an option."
A date for Warsame's sentencing hearing had not been set.
