The US Supreme Court agreed on Friday to review the case of the only “enemy combatant” detained on US soil, Qatari national Ali al-Marri, who has been held without charge in a military jail since 2003.
The court said it would hear and take a decision by next summer on the case, which calls into question the right of the president to hold indefinitely and without charge a person declared an enemy combatant.
“We are confident that upon review, the Court will strike down this radical and unnecessary departure from our nation’s most basic values,” said Jonathan Hafetz, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) counsel.
“Our position is not that the government has no power to hold him, but if they’re going to deprive him of his liberty, as they’ve done now for years, they’re going to need to charge him and try him like this country has done since its founding to every other person accused of wrongdoing,” Hafetz said.
Briefs will not be filed in the case until after US president-elect Barack Obama takes office, Hafetz said.
Al-Marri was detained by FBI agents in late 2001, three months after coming to the US in September of that year with his family to study at a university in Illinois.
A trial date was set for July 2003, but less than a month before was to begin, al-Marri was transferred to a military prison in South Carolina after Bush signed an order declaring him an enemy combatant.
Under current US law, al-Marri could be held in the military prison without charge “for the rest of his natural life,” Hafetz said.
A federal appeals court in July ruled that the US president has the power to keep a suspect jailed indefinitely, but that the detainee has the right to challenge his detention as an “enemy combatant.”
“This sweeping claim of executive authority violates America’s best traditions and defies fundamental principles of due process that have governed the nation since its founding,” ACLU executive director Steven Shapiro said.
“We are hopeful that the court will reverse the appeals court decision and ensure that people in this country cannot be seized from their homes and imprisoned indefinitely simply because the president says so,” he said.
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