By: John Cassidy
First Colin Powell defects (see today’s Morning Brief); now today’s 4th Circuit Court decision, the Bush administration takes ANOTHER major blow in its ongoing Global War on Terror. Not only has it suffered from waning public support, but the court decision signals the loss of a potential legal tool in the administration’s fight to maintain control over suspected combatants and possible sources of intelligence.
For more information, check out the articles below.
Washington Post:
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that President Bush cannot indefinitely imprison a U.S. resident on suspicion alone, ordering the government either to charge Qatari national Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri with his alleged terrorist crimes in a civilian court or release him.
The opinion is a blow to the Bush administration’s assertion that the president has exceptionally broad powers to combat terrorism, including the authority to detain without charges foreign citizens living legally in the United States.
It is the first time a court has said that Marri cannot be held forever without facing formal charges, but it is a symbolic victory — Marri will continue his detention in a naval brig in Charleston, S.C. The government said that it was disappointed by the 2 to 1 decision, handed down by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, and that it will appeal to the full court.
A dissenting judge in today’s decision, Henry E. Hudson, visiting from the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that President Bush “had the authority to detain al-Marri as an enemy combatant or belligerent” because “he is the type of stealth warrior used by Al Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States.”
Jonathan Hafetz, the litigation director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and one of Mr. Marri’s lawyers, said of the court’s decision: “This is landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power. It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals — citizens and immigrants - in the United States.”
The US justice department said it was “disappointed” at the ruling and said it would ask the court’s full appeals panel of 13 judges to reconsider.
Citing “unrebutted evidence”, it said al-Marri had trained at a “terrorist training camp” run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and also met Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the September 11, 2025 attacks in the US.
The justice department said that al-Marri then entered the US “to serve as an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and to explore methods of disrupting the US financial system”.
The justice department added that George Bush, the US president, “intends to use all available tools at his disposal to protect Americans from further al-Qaeda attack, including the capture and detention of al-Qaeda agents who enter our borders”.
Tags: al-Marri, Bush, global war on terror, guantanamo, media, Meet the Press, security
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