Supreme Court to review case of enemy combatant on US soil Agence France-Presse

Published: Friday December 5, 2008





Print This Email This WASHINGTON  The US Supreme Court agreed Friday to review the case of the only "enemy combatant" detained on US soil, Qatari national Ali al-Marri, who has been held without charge in a military jail since 2003.



The court said it will hear and take a decision by next summer on the case, which calls into question the right of the president to hold indefinitely and without charge a person declared an enemy combatant.



"We are confident that upon review, the Court will strike down this radical and unnecessary departure from our nation's most basic values," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and counsel for Marri.



Marri has been held in a US military prison for five years after President George W. Bush declared him an enemy combatant. The US government alleges he has knowledge of terror plots and trained in Al-Qaeda camps.



Marri came to the United States in September 2001 with his family, to study at a university in Illinois.



He was detained three months later by two FBI agents who believed he had information that could aid the investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hafetz wrote in an opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times last month.



Two months later, the US government filed charges against him, claiming he had engaged in credit card fraud and lied to the FBI.



A trial date was set for July 2003, but less than a month before it was due to begin, Marri was transferred to a military prison in South Carolina after Bush signed an order declaring him an enemy combatant in the war on terror.



Under current US law, al-Marri could be held in prison without charge "for the rest of his natural life," according to Hafetz.



A federal appeals court in July ruled that the US president has the power to keep a terrorist suspect jailed indefinitely, but that the detainee has the right to challenge his detention as an "enemy combatant."



"This sweeping claim of executive authority violates America's best traditions and defies fundamental principles of due process that have governed the nation since its founding," Steven Shapiro, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement on Friday.



"We are hopeful that the Court will reverse the appeals court decision and ensure that people in this country cannot be seized from their homes and imprisoned indefinitely simply because the president says so," he added.



The US Supreme Court has ruled that war on terror detainees held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- which the court considered to be US territory where rights enshrined in the US Constitution must be respected -- have a right to challenge their detention in a civilian court.



