Does Constitution apply to enemy combatant on U.S. soil?
WASHINGTON (AP) — If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.
But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.
Al-Marri’s capture six years ago might be the Bush administration’s biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack.
To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.
There is little middle ground between the two sides in al-Marri’s case, which is before a federal appeals court in Virginia. The government says the president needs this power to keep the nation safe. Al-Marri’s lawyers say that as long as the president can detain anyone he wants, nobody is safe.
A Qatari national, al-Marri came to the U.S. with his wife and five children on September 10, 2001 — one day before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. He arrived on a student visa seeking a master’s degree in computer science from Bradley University, a small private school in Peoria, Illinois.
The government says he had other plans.
According to court documents citing multiple intelligence sources, al-Marri spent months in al Qaeda training camps during the late 1990s and was schooled in the science of poisons. The summer before al-Marri left for the United States, he allegedly met with Osama bin Laden and September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The two al Qaeda leaders decided al-Marri would make a perfect sleeper agent and rushed him into the U.S. before September 11, the government says.
A computer specialist, al-Marri was ordered to wreak havoc on the U.S. banking system and serve as a liaison for other al Qaeda operatives entering this country, according to a court document filed by Jeffrey Rapp, a senior member of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
According to Rapp, al-Marri received up to $13,000 for his trip, plus money to buy a laptop, courtesy of Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who is suspected of helping finance the 9/11 attacks.
A week after the attacks, Congress unanimously passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force. It gave President Bush the power to use all necessary and appropriate force against anyone involved in planning, aiding or carrying out the attacks.
The FBI interviewed al-Marri that October and arrested him in December as part of the 9/11 investigation. He rarely had been attending classes and was failing in school, the government said.
