The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday rejected a request that he appoint a lawyer to represent a terror suspect who was captured last weekend in Libya and was said to be undergoing interrogation while in military custody on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

After that interrogation is over, the suspect, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, is expected to be advised of his right to a lawyer and speedy court appearance, and would eventually be brought to Manhattan for criminal prosecution.

Mr. Ruqai, 49, who is better known as Abu Anas al-Libi, faces indictment in Federal District Court on conspiracy charges stemming from the 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people.

On Tuesday, David E. Patton, the chief federal public defender in New York City, wrote to the judge overseeing cases stemming from that indictment, arguing that Mr. Ruqai was “a defendant in an indicted case before this court” and was entitled to be taken “without unnecessary delay” before a magistrate judge, where he would also have the right to counsel.

But on Friday, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, said that such a requirement was triggered only by a “federal criminal arrest.”

“The government denies that any federal criminal arrest has taken place,” he wrote, “and there is no evidence to the contrary.” As a result, Judge Kaplan wrote, there was “no proper basis” for the court to conclude that “the obligation to produce the defendant before it in this criminal case has come into existence.” [Continue reading…]