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Court rules in favor of enemy combatant

By ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago

The Bush administration cannot use new anti-terrorism laws to keep
U.S. residents locked up indefinitely without charging them, a divided
federal appeals court said Monday.

The ruling was a harsh rebuke of one of the central tools the
administration believes it has to combat terror.

"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to
seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls
them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the
constitution — and the country," the court panel said.

In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found
that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri,
a legal U.S. resident, of his constitutional rights to challenge his
accusers in court. It ruled the government must allow al-Marri to be
released from military detention.

The government intends to ask the full 4th Circuit to hear the case,
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.

"The President has made clear that he intends to use all available
tools at his disposal to protect Americans from further al-Qaida
attack, including the capture and detention of al-Qaida agents who
enter our borders," Boyd said in a statement.

Al-Marri has been held in solitary confinement in the Navy brig in
Charleston, S.C., since June 2003. The Qatar native has been detained
since his December 2001 arrest at his home in Peoria, Ill., where he
moved with his wife and five children a day before the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks to study for a master's degree at Bradley University.

"This is a landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for
unchecked executive power," al-Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said
in a statement. "It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all
individuals — citizens and immigrants — in the United States."

The court said its ruling doesn't mean al-Marri should be set free.
Instead, he can be returned to the civilian court system and tried on
criminal charges.

"But the government cannot subject al-Marri to indefinite military
detention," the opinion said. "For in the United States, the military
cannot seize and imprison civilians — let alone imprison them
indefinitely."

Al-Marri is currently the only U.S. resident held as an enemy
combatant within the U.S.

Jose Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen, had been held as an enemy
combatant in a Navy brig for 3 1/2 years before he was hastily added
to an existing case in Miami in November 2005, a few days before a
U.S. Supreme Court deadline for Bush administration briefs on the
question of the president's powers to continue holding him in military
prison without charge.

Federal investigators found credit card numbers on Al-Marri's laptop
computer and charged him with credit card fraud. Upon further
investigation, the government said, agents found evidence that
al-Marri had links to al-Qaida terrorists and was a national security
threat. Authorities shifted al-Marri's case from the criminal system
and moved him to indefinite military detention.

Al-Marri has denied the government's allegations and is seeking to
challenge the government's evidence and cross-examine its witnesses in
court.

Lawyers for al-Marri argued that the Military Commissions Act, passed
last fall to establish military trials, doesn't repeal the writ of
habeas corpus — defendants' traditional right to challenge their
detention.

If the government's stance was upheld, civil liberties groups said,
the Justice Department could use terrorism law to hold any immigrants
indefinitely and strip them of the right to use civilian courts to
challenge their detention.

The Bush administration's attorneys had urged the federal appeals
panel to dismiss al-Marri's case, arguing that the act stripped the
courts of jurisdiction to hear cases of detainees who are declared
enemy combatants. They contended that Congress and the Supreme Court
have given the president the authority to fight terrorism and prevent
additional attacks on the nation.

The court, however, said in Monday's opinion that the MCA doesn't
apply to al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who wasn't captured outside
U.S. soil, detained at Guantanamo Bay or on other foreign soil, who
has not received a combatant status review tribunal.

"The MCA was not intended to, and does not apply to aliens like
al-Marri, who have legally entered, and are seized while legally
residing in, the United States," according to the court's majority
opinion, written by Judge Diana G. Motz.

The court also said that the government failed to back up its argument
that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted by Congress
immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, gives the president broad
powers to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant. The act neither
classifies certain civilians as enemy combatants, nor otherwise
authorizes the government to detain people indefinitely, the court ruled.

The case, which is expected to reach the Supreme Court, could help
define how much authority the government has to indefinitely detain
those accused of terrorism and to strip detainees of their rights to
challenge the lawfulness or conditions of their detention.

___

The case is al-Marri v. Wright.

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