Should terrorists captured on the battlefield have greater rights than German POWs did?

The Los Angeles Times reports that Mohammad Jawad may be released from American custody because he was not read his Miranda rights warning. Jawad was not arrested in the USA for armed robbery or theft as one might assume from that report.

Jawad was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan after having thrown a grenade that wounded two American soldiers. He confessed to his action, but was not warned of his rights not to testify against himself. Most of the evidence against him comes from his own statements.

He was not arrested by police officers trained to gather evidence of crime and to warn arrestees of their rights under Miranda as a matter of course. He was captured by soldiers on the field of battle and treated as a prisoner of war rather than a suspect in a crime. Undoubtedly, the military failed to gather evidence of the grenade's explosion or Jawad's fingerprints on the grenade.

This shows the complete lack of applicability of American criminal law and the US Constitution to the people captured on the battlefield. Jameel Jaffer with the ACLU argues, "The right way to deal with people suspected of committing terrorism crimes is to prosecute them in ordinary federal courts."

German soldiers captured on European battlefields were not tried in US federal courts; they were held in POW camps for the duration of the war. Terrorists who do not wear uniforms or belong to an organized military force should not gain greater rights than the German POWs.