by Travis Normand

Here is another example of how terrorist activities are typically treated as a criminal matter, and not a LOAC matter, when they are attempted on U.S. soil.

US prosecutor: 18-year-old arrested for attempting to set off car bomb outside Chicago bar
Washington Post (WashingtonPost.com)
By Associated Press, Published 15 September 2012

CHICAGO — Undercover FBI agents arrested an 18-year-old American man who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said Saturday.

Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, was arrested Friday night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be terrorists provided him with a phony car bomb.

Read the entire article HERE!

Further, if you watch the MSNBC video on this story (posted here), you will hear reporter John Yang say that Adel Daoud “is not a member, or connected, with any terrorist group.”

While this is most likely the case, the Washington Post/Associate Press article quoted above states the following:

. . . Daoud was active in jihadist Internet forums and was accessing articles written by Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric who became a key figure in the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Another important fact is that Daoud is an American Citizen.

One can assume from these facts that in order to be considered part of a terrorist group that the U.S. is currently at war with (i.e. al-Qaeda), and thus an unlawful combatant, there must be more of a connection between the accused and the said terrorist group.