LONDON: The twin raids mounted by US forces on terror suspects in Africa at weekend are shaping up as a test of whether the Obama administration is re-emphasising the capture of terrorist suspects - risky missions that have been relatively rare during the past five years - and shifting away from what it calls “targeted killing” operations, usually involving armed drones.

The seizure of Abu Anas al Libi, an alleged Al Qaeda operative wanted for the 1998 east Africa embassy bombings, is also looking like a test of a related issue: whether the Obama administration is recommitting to civilian courts for trying terrorist suspects that it captures in the future.

A likely prologue for Libi’s case came in April 2011, when US special operations forces captured Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the Somali coast, and kept him in the brig of the USS Boxer for nearly three months of interrogation before the navy took him to the southern district of New York to face terrorism charges.

In March, the Justice Department revealed that Warsame had pleaded guilty to all nine counts against him. Reportedly, information that Warsame provided his interrogators contributed to the September 2011 operation that killed the US citizen and Al Qaida propagandist Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen.

One reason that the capture of terrorism suspects has been rare is the policy limbo concerning their detention. Trying terrorists in civilian courts, particularly those captured overseas, remains a controversial decision in Congress, particularly but not exclusively among Republicans. So does the Obama administration’s stalled efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

At the same time, bringing Libi before a military commission would spark criticism from the left and internationally, quarters that consider the commissions to provide insufficient due process.

Senior special operations officials have cited the detentions policy inertia as contributing to the tacit preference for killing terrorism suspects instead of capturing them.

In June 2011, after the Warsame detention became public, Admiral William McRaven, now the head of US special operations command, publicly urged the administration and Congress to settle on a policy for his elite forces to execute.

Obama stated that he preferred to capture terrorists instead of killing them, and recommitted to shuttering Guantanamo Bay, during a May speech at the National Defence University. It remains less clear how that preference translates into policy.

The Defence Department has transferred only two detainees from Guantanamo to foreign countries since the speech; detentions policy remains unsettled; and special operations raids are a risky option, as demonstrated by the weekend’s Somalia mission that appears not to have netted its target, reportedly an Al Shabaab militant known as Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir.

But even if Obama succeeds in the arduous challenge of closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, his administration has long embraced the controversial military commissions process hosted there, which it helped revise and entrench in a 2009 law.

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the national security council at the White House, while not announcing any decision on Al Libi’s case, defended both federal courts - sometimes called “Article Three courts”, a reference to their place in the US constitution - and military commissions as legitimate venues for terrorism suspects.

“Article Three courts have a long track record of success, proving that federal prosecutions can often be the most effective mechanism for gathering useful intelligence, neutralizing a threat, and keeping a dangerous individual behind bars,” Hayden said.

“We also fully support the use of the military commissions system in appropriate cases, based on the reforms implemented in the bipartisan military commissions act of 2009. Both systems are potentially viable options that must be evaluated based on the facts of each individual case.”

By arrangement with the Guardian