The Clipboard: Qatari Man Designated An Enemy Combatant

From an article¹:

Federal law enforcement officials arrested Marri in December 2001. He was held as a material witness, then charged with lying to the FBI about calls he allegedly made in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks to a telephone number in the United Arab Emirates. The number belonged to Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, suspected of managing a bank account used by some of the hijackers. Hawsawi, who allegedly received calls from several of the hijackers, was captured March 1 in Pakistan along with Mohammed.
Marri has denied calling Hawsawi.

Bush designated Marri an enemy combatant yesterday morning after federal prosecutors in Illinois dropped charges of false statements to the FBI and credit card fraud. Alice Fisher, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, said prosecutors were confident they could have prevailed in court. She said they decided to forgo the charges in an effort to deter terrorist attacks. (link)

Only charged with lying to the FBI and credit card fraud, now he's an enemy combatant with no lawyer and no trial date? They suspect him of wiring money to terrorists and researching chemical weapons, but they can't bring normal criminal charges against him? Uh, isn't that what we have anti-terrorism laws for? Oh, and the guy's been detained a year and a half (since December 2001), but he apparently presents such a clear and present danger that he has to be declared an enemy combatant? Every time I think the Bush Administration can't get worse, it does.

Blogger George Paine has more commentary on this. See also TalkLeft.

Added: According to the New York Times (registration required), the reason for the change in al-Marri's status is so that he can be interrogated. Uh, wasn't that why they were detaining him all that time?

The disappearance of enemies of the state into a parallel legal system where they have few or no rights is something that I used to think only happened in dictatorships. For it to happen even once in America is too many times. This is now the third. The Bush Administration is taking everything good that America stands for and shredding it piece by piece. Anybody who loves America ought to stand against them.

---

Complete text of the article, Qatari Man Designated An Enemy Combatant, by Susan Schmidt

A Qatari man described by federal prosecutors as an al Qaeda "sleeper operative" was designated an enemy combatant by President Bush yesterday, as the government dropped criminal charges against him and turned him over to the U.S. military.

Ali S. Marri, who arrived in the United States the day before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was trained in computer hacking and the use of poisons, according to new information the United States has obtained from former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and another captured al Qaeda operative, prosecutors said. He was sent to the United States to help settle al Qaeda members arriving for follow-up attacks, the captives reportedly have told interrogators.

Marri was transferred yesterday from a federal jail in Illinois to an undisclosed military brig, where he could be detained indefinitely without legal protections afforded to defendants in the court system. He may eventually be brought before a military tribunal, officials said.

Marri is the first terror suspect in the United States to be declared an enemy combatant after originally being charged in federal court. Civil libertarians say the enemy combatant designation circumvents a person's constitutional rights by curtailing access to lawyers and the right to confront accusers and call witnesses.

The Bush administration says the move is justified in some circumstances to protect the nation against terrorism. The other two enemy combatants who were U.S. residents are Jose Padilla, accused of plotting to use a radioactive "dirty bomb," and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was taken into custody in Afghanistan. Unlike Marri, both are U.S. citizens.

Marri, 37, lived in Peoria, Ill., with his wife and five young children. He had trained at the al Farooq camp in Afghanistan, where he met Osama bin Laden and offered himself for a "martyrdom" mission, prosecutors said.

Federal law enforcement officials arrested Marri in December 2001. He was held as a material witness, then charged with lying to the FBI about calls he allegedly made in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks to a telephone number in the United Arab Emirates. The number belonged to Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, suspected of managing a bank account used by some of the hijackers. Hawsawi, who allegedly received calls from several of the hijackers, was captured March 1 in Pakistan along with Mohammed.

Marri has denied calling Hawsawi.

Bush designated Marri an enemy combatant yesterday morning after federal prosecutors in Illinois dropped charges of false statements to the FBI and credit card fraud. Alice Fisher, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, said prosecutors were confident they could have prevailed in court. She said they decided to forgo the charges in an effort to deter terrorist attacks.

She declined to elaborate. "We make these decisions on an individual case-by-case basis, taking national security into account," Fisher said.

Marri's lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said in an interview he plans to challenge the enemy combatant designation. He said the designation unfairly deprives Marri of legal rights, including access to counsel, and amounts to "end-running the legal system." Lustberg said he believes the administration acted because "we were raising powerful legal challenges" to the government's allegations of false statements.

"If the government had proof he was involved in terrorism, they would have charged him with that, but they didn't," Lustberg said. He said he had heard nothing from the government or his client to indicate that Marri acted as a U.S. facilitator for al Qaeda operatives or was a "sleeper" operative.

Law enforcement officials disclosed new details about Marri's alleged activities yesterday. They said al Qaeda assigned Marri, a graduate student in computer science at Bradley University, to explore ways to hack into the computer systems of U.S. banks. They also said his computer showed he had frequently visited Web sites dealing with the production of hydrogen cyanide, an extremely lethal gas that al Qaeda allegedly had plotted to use. Fisher said prosecutors do not believe Marri had been "specifically tasked" to plot a chemical or biological attack in the United States.

Marri's wife, Maha, is a Saudi citizen who was transported out of the United States in November by the Saudi Embassy, angering FBI agents and prosecutors who had confiscated her passport and issued her a grand jury subpoena. Saudi Embassy officials said they considered the subpoena expired.

FBI officials said yesterday they hope to interview her soon in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have promised to coordinate the interview.

The difficulties of pursuing a terrorism case in the court system have been illustrated in recent months by efforts to bring self-confessed al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui to trial in Alexandria. Moussaoui has demanded access to al Qaeda captives, including Mohammed, to testify in his defense. Prosecutors have sought to severely limit such access, which the Defense Department contends would interrupt valuable interrogations. A decision on access is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. If prosecutors lose, Moussaoui could be declared an enemy combatant.

Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch called the designation of Marri "extremely troubling." She said it places Marri in a legal "black hole" even as the United States is encouraging other countries, including Iraq, to uphold the rule of law.

Tips to the FBI led to a search of Marri's Peoria apartment in October 2001, where agents found more than 1,000 credit card numbers on his computer, as well as audio files of bin Laden, photographs of the Sept. 11 attacks and a computer folder labeled "chem" that contained bookmarked Web sites with fact sheets on hazardous chemicals, including information on buying them. Also bookmarked were sites about weapons and satellite equipment, and an almanac showing locations of U.S. dams, waterways and railroads, according to court documents.

FBI agents subsequently obtained Marri's phone records and discovered the alleged calls to the number used by Hawsawi in the UAE. Hawsawi, according to the FBI, opened accounts at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai in June 2001, then wired money to U.S. bank accounts opened by some of the hijackers and sent one of them a credit card drawn on a UAE account. Hijack leader Mohamed Atta called the number, according to prosecutors, and Hawsawi used it while making a wire transfer to Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh. Immediately before embarking on the Sept. 11 attacks, some of the hijackers sent leftover funds back to the Hawsawi account.

reference=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24535-2003Jun23.html