A major new book on Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror–including contributions from nineteen prominent experts from government and the academic community–was published today by Carolina Academic Press in cooperation with the University of Virginia Law School’s Center for National Security Law (which celebrates its twenty-ninth anniversary this month as the nation’s oldest think tank in the growing new field).

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, produced an unusual armed conflict raising a variety of important issues under both international and United States law. What legal regime should govern the detention and treatment of alleged foreign terrorists? Are they soldiers or criminals? Some say they are “unlawful combatants,” but what does that really mean? Should they be tried by military courts or in federal district courts?

How can America best reconcile our desire to prevent future terrorist attacks with our historic commitment to protecting civil liberties? Should the government be able to have civil lawsuits dismissed on the grounds that going to trial would inevitably disclose sensitive “State Secrets”? Is there a role for civil lawsuits to hold terrorists and States that support them accountable when their attacks harm Americans?

To assist both policymakers and the general public to understand some of these complex issues, two of the founders of the academic field of “national security law” have brought together a distinguished and diverse group of experts to address key issues in the struggle against terror. As the chapters in this volume will demonstrate, honest and able experts are not in full agreement on many of these important issues.

More than two decades before 9/11, the editors of this volume, Professors John Norton Moore and Robert F. Turner, founded the Center for National Security Law (CNSL) at the University of Virginia School of Law–the world’s first “think tank” in what is now an established field taught at most law schools. A decade before 9/11 they began training law professors and government lawyers in their annual National Security Law Institute, which will take place for the eighteenth time this summer between May 30 and June 11. Many of the contributors to this volume have either attended or taught at CNSL Institutes.

Iraqi police, working with U.S. advisors, arrested five suspected members of the al-Qaida in Iraq and Islamic State of Iraq terrorist groups today during operations in Iraq’s Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, military officials reported.

In Saytiyah, about 65 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police and U.S. advisors searched with an arrest warrant for an alleged Islamic State of Iraq member known to be directly linked to a—Qaida in Iraq. The man is suspected of orchestrating attacks in Baghdad from remote locations in Diyala province, and also is wanted for providing vehicles for vehicle-borne bombings in the region.

Iraqi police established a cordon and searched a building during the operation. During preliminary questioning and based on evidence found at the scene, a suspect was determined to be connected with the Islamic State of Iraq network and was arrested without incident. The warranted man was not apprehended.

In a separate operation, Iraqi police and U.S. advisors searched for an alleged al-Qaida in Iraq and Islamic State of Iraq associate in a rural area about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The team searched a building and questioned people. Based on information gathered at the scene, they arrested four people suspected of engaging in terrorist activity.

A growing number of recruits from Western nations — including the U.S. — are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend training camps run by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, American and European counterterrorism officials say.

The flow of Western recruits has continued despite the intensified American campaign to take out terrorist leaders with drone missile attacks.

According to the Washington Post, A propaganda videotape released in September by a group calling itself the German Taliban showed a gunman identified as Abu Ibrahim the American. The tape was one of several released by groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida warning of an attack on German targets if the government did not withdraw its 3,800 troops from Afghanistan. At least 30 recruits from Germany have traveled to Pakistan this year for training, Germany security forces say.

The Post added:

“About 10 people — not necessarily the same individuals — have returned to Germany this year, fueling concerns that fresh plots are in the works against European targets.”

Pakistani officials in August arrested a dozen foreigners on their way to North Waziristan, a tribal region where many of the training camps are located. Among them was Mehdi Ghezali, a former inmate at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In July, American officials announced that they had taken into custody New Yorker Bryant Neal Vinas, who confessed to traveling to al-Qaida camps in Pakistan and training to become a suicide bomber.

While he has been in custody, the U.S. has made a series of successful drone strikes on suspected al-Qaida locations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, raising questions about whether Vinas provided the information that led to any of the deadly attacks, according to The Associated Press.

Vinas also told American authorities that he spent time in Pakistan with another New York resident, whose whereabouts are unknown. Al-Qaida and its affiliates have now developed an extensive recruiting network, The Post disclosed, with agents providing Western recruits with guidance, money, and travel routes to South Asia.