June 11, 2007
'Enemy Combatant' Held In U.S. Ordered Released
A U.S. appeals court ordered Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri released after finding no evidence to support the Bush administration's assertion that he is an enemy combatant. Al-Marri, a Qatari national and legal U.S. resident when he was arrested in 2001, is the only person being held as an enemy combatant inside the United States.
Noting that al-Marri had never been charged in the nearly four years he was held in a South Carolina naval brig, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diana Gribbon Motz ruled that the Military Commissions Act did not retroactively apply to al-Marri. "We conclude that we must grant al-Marri habeas relief. Even assuming the truth of the government's allegations, the president lacks power to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain al-Marri."
Al-Marri may be headed for the same hazy fate as Jose Padilla, the only other person to be held in the naval brig as an enemy combatant. The same court also considered Padilla's case. In late 2005, the court denied the Bush administration's request to transfer Padilla out of military custody because the government never explained its motives. It is widely believed the administration de-classified Padilla, a U.S. citizen, as an enemy combatant to head off what it saw as an inevitable U.S. Supreme Court ruling against it.
Today's 2-1 ruling does not mean that al-Marri, a computer science graduate student who was living in Illinois when he was arrested by FBI agents in December 2001, will be set free. Most likely, he will be released from military custody and charged in the civilian courts, as happened with Padilla.
This is the second setback in as many weeks for the Bush administration on its military detentions policy. On June 5, military judges said two detainees could not be held and tried in Guantanamo Bay because they were not classified as "unlawful enemy combatants," as stipulated by the MCA, but as just "enemy combatants." No detainee currently held in Guantanamo is classified as an unlawful combatant; those rulings threaten the Bush administration's hold on the 380 men imprisoned there.
The Fourth Circuit's Web site has text of today's decision [PDF]. Padilla is currently being tried in a terrorism-support case; AP has the latest.
