Man fights detention as "enemy combatant"

RICHMOND, Va. — Attorneys for an immigrant the Bush administration calls an al-Qaida sleeper agent said Thursday that their client is being detained unconstitutionally and should be allowed to challenge his imprisonment in court.

Ali al-Marri, the only person being held as an enemy combatant on U.S. soil, has indisputable rights as a legal resident of the United States, including the right to due process and the right to challenge his accusers in court, his lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, told a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"The basic question is whether criminal or military law governs this case," Hafetz said. The president "cannot militarize the case of a man in Peoria with the stroke of a pen."

Al-Marri, 41, has been held in solitary confinement in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., since June 2003. The Qatar native has been detained since his December 2001 arrest at his home in Peoria, Ill., where he moved with his wife and five children a day before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to study for a master's degree.

Federal investigators searched his laptop, found credit-card numbers on his computer and charged him with credit-card fraud.

Upon further investigation, the government said, agents found evidence that al-Marri had links to al-Qaida terrorists and that he posed a threat to national security, and shifted his case from the criminal system and moved him to indefinite military detention.

Al-Marri has denied the government's allegations and is seeking to challenge the government's evidence and cross-examine its witnesses in court.

A Bush administration lawyer urged the panel to dismiss al-Marri's appeal, arguing that under the Military Commissions Act, the courts have no jurisdiction to hear cases of detained aliens who are declared enemy combatants.