Feb 04 12:17 PM US/Eastern
For the US government, an alleged terrorist arrested at his home in the United States and imprisoned at a naval base in South Carolina has no more legal rights than the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, heard Thursday the case of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari immigrant and the only so-called "enemy combatant" arrested and still held in the United States.
Marri, a legal US resident, is accused by the government of being a "sleeper agent" in the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.
President George W. Bush's administration argues that a recent law sharply curtailing alleged terrorists' access to federal courts can be applied to Marri, who was arrested at his home in Illinois, and that he can be held without trial until the end of the "war on terror."
Marri's defense attorneys are demanding that their client be allowed to appear before an independent judge, a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.
The law has not yet been established on the constitutional guarantees of the detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo, the lawyers argued, but it is clear when the facts occur on US soil.
"The president of the United States seeks in this case the powers of a king: to detain indefinitely an individual arrested in his home inside the United States without charge, without evidence, without a hearing, and without judicial review," they told the Richmond court, considered one of the most conservative in the country.
Marri arrived in the United States on September 10, 2001, with his wife, their five children and a visa to pursue his studies in Peoria, Illinois.
He was arrested three months later and charged with credit card fraud. But in June 2003 Bush declared Marri an "enemy combatant" and he was transferred to a military prison in Charleston, South Carolina.
There were already two other "enemy combatants" detained there, both of them US citizens: Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla.
Hamdi, a US-born Saudi, was released and returned to Saudi Arabia in 2004 after the US Supreme Court ordered the government to allow him access to US courts. Padilla, whose lawyers moved to challenge his military detention before the Supreme Court, was transferred a year ago to the civil court system and a federal prison.
The three men have described their imprisonment in South Carolina: absolute isolation, with no sounds or daylight; regular humiliation; frequent sleep deprivation; and exposure to extreme temperatures.
Marri has contested his detention since 2003. After initially balking, the government finally explained in December 2005 its case against him in a document signed by an anti-terrorism official.
According to the document, Marri trained in Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, introduced Marri to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the months before the attacks and Marri offered his services for a martyr's mission.
But Marri's defense lawyers refused to respond to the document, condemning the murkiness of the origins of the accusations. They demanded to see the proof and talk to witnesses.
The decision of the appeals court in Richmond is not expected for several weeks. The case could eventually go to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the federal appeals court in Washington was due to rule on similar appeals lodged by dozens of Guantanamo detainees. Among them is Marri's brother, who was arrested in Pakistan.
In December, a federal judge ruled in the case of a Guantanamo detainee that the US Congress did not have the power to annul the constitutional right to court access before an independent judge, but that this right only applies to people arrested or detained in the United States.