A panel from a conservative federal appeals court harshly rebuked the anti-terrorism strategy of US President George W. Bush on Monday, ruling that US residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without being charged.
The three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government should charge Ali al-Marri, a legal US resident and the only suspected enemy combatant on US soil or release him from military custody.
The federal Military Commissions Act (MCA) does not strip al-Marri of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, the judges found in Monday's 2-1 decision.
"Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the president to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them `enemy combatants,"' the court said.
Such detention "would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country," Judge Diana Motz wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Judge Roger Gregory.
Judge Henry Hudson, a federal judge in Richmond, dissented.
"This is a landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power," al-Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said in a statement. "It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals -- citizens and immigrants -- in the United States."
The government intends to ask the full 4th Circuit to hear the case, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said.
"The president has made clear that he 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," Boyd said in a statement.
The court said its ruling doesn't mean al-Marri should be set free. Instead, he can be returned to the civilian court system and tried on criminal charges.
In his dissent, Hudson said the government properly detained al-Marri as an enemy combatant.
"Although al-Marri was not personally engaged in armed conflict with US forces, he is the type of stealth warrior used by al-Qaeda to perpetrate terrorist acts against the United States," wrote Hudson, who was appointed to the federal bench by Bush.
The other two judges were appointed by former US president Bill Clinton.
The decision is the latest in a series of court rulings against Bush's anti-terrorism program.
Al-Marri has been held in solitary confinement in the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, since June 2003. The Qatar native has been detained since his December 2001 arrest at his home in Peoria, Illinois, where he moved with his wife and five children a day before the Sept. 11 attacks to study for a master's degree at Bradley University.
Investigators found credit card numbers on al-Marri's laptop computer and charged him with credit card fraud. The government said, agents later found evidence that al-Marri had links to al-Qaeda terrorists and was a national security threat. Al-Marri has denied the government's allegations.
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