Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri | Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri | al-Qaeda | 20031231 |
Home Front: WoT | ||
US: Immigrants May Be Held Indefinitely | ||
2006-11-14 | ||
![]() In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an ``enemy combatant,'' a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts. That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes. ``It's pretty stunning that any alien living in the United States can be denied this right,'' said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Al-Marri. ``It means any non-citizen, and there are millions of them, can be whisked off at night and be put in detention.''
In a separate court filing in Washington on Monday, the Justice Department defended that law as constitutional and necessary. Government attorneys said foreign fighters arrested as part of an overseas military action have no constitutional rights and are being afforded more legal rights than ever. In its short filing in the Al-Marri case, however, the Justice Department doesn't mention that Al-Marri is being held at a military prison in South Carolina - a fact that his attorneys say affords him the same rights as anyone else being held in the United States.
| ||
Link |
Home Front | |||
Court to Rule on âEnemy Combatantâ Label | |||
2003-11-18 | |||
A federal appeals judge said Monday it would be "a sea change" in the Constitution to allow the Bush administration to designate a U.S. citizen suspected in an alleged dirty bomb plot as an enemy combatant.
Thatâs shaky, the Constitution makes the President the commander of the armed forces and thus director of the war effort. Giving such power to the executive branch with only limited review by the courts, he said, would be "a sea change in the constitutional life of this country and ... unprecedented in civilized society." Said Judge Rosemary S. Pooler, another member of the panel: "If, in fact, the battlefield is the United States, I think Congress has to say that, and I donât think they have yet." Later, she added, "As terrible as 9/11 was, it didnât repeal the Constitution."
So was 9/11, Jenny. The third judge on the panel, Richard C. Wesley, suggested the case shouldnât have been brought in Manhattan. "This should be litigated in South Carolina," Wesley snapped.
Or they could hear it en banc. Padilla was arrested at Chicagoâs OâHare airport as he returned from Pakistan. The government said he had proposed to Abu Zubaydah, then al-Qaidaâs top terrorism coordinator, to steal radioactive material to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. Only two other people have been designated enemy combatants since the 2001 terrorist attacks: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who has been accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan. Iâm torn by this. Proper thing to do (says me) would be to charge Padilla with treason, give him a lawyer, and put him on trial. I donât think folks would be fooled by his excuses. | |||
Link |
Qatari Man With Al-Qaeda Link Pleads Innocent in US Court |
2003-05-31 |
PEORIA, Illinois â A Qatari native who is alleged to have run a credit card scam to help fund the Al-Qaeda terror network denied misleading FBI agents in federal court here Thursday and was ordered held without bond. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri pleaded not guilty to making false statements to FBI agents and five other counts relating to identity and credit card fraud and making false statements to banks. The 38-year-old was arrested in December 2001 after being repeatedly quizzed by FBI agents investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to the indictment, Al-Marri lied to FBI agents when he said that he did not call a phone number used by Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, the alleged moneyman behind the Sept. 11 hijackings, several times in the fall of 2001. Prosecutors claim that Al-Marri also lied to the agents about when he was last in the United States. In interviews with the authorities, Al-Marri said that he had been outside the US for some 10 years, since he graduated from Peoriaâs Bradley University with a business degree in 1991. But authorities claim Al-Marri was in the United States in the summer of 2000, when he allegedly used fake names and social security numbers to open three bank accounts in Macomb, central Illinois and set up a dummy postal address for a ghost business âAAA Carpets.â For his part, Al-Marri said he returned to the United States on Sept. 10 â one day before the attacks on New York and Washington â to study for a masters degree in computer science at Bradley. |
Link |