"Even Suspected Terrorists Have Rights?"

AFP/Getty Images/File – Members of the public line up in front of the US Supreme Court building while waiting to hear oral arguments …

The US Supreme Court agreed 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 will 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," Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and counsel for al-Marri, said in a statement.

"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 told AFP.

Briefs will not be filed in the case until after president-elect Barack Obama takes office on January 20 next year, Hafetz told AFP.

Al-Marri was detained by FBI agents in late 2001, three months after coming to the United States in September of that year with his family to study at a university in Illinois.

The federal agents accused him of having information that could aid the investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hafetz wrote in an opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times last month.

In early 2002 the US government filed charges against him, claiming he had engaged in credit card fraud and lied to the FBI.

A trial date was set for July 2003, but less than a month before it was due to begin, al-Marri was transferred to a military prison in South Carolina after Bush signed an order declaring him an enemy combatant in the war on terror.

Under current US law, al-Marri could be held in the military prison without charge "for the rest of his natural life," according to Hafetz.

A federal appeals court in July ruled that the US president has the power to keep a terrorist 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," Steven Shapiro, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement on Friday.

"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 added.

The Supreme Court has ruled that war-on-terror detainees held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- which the court considered to be US territory where rights enshrined in the US Constitution must be respected -- have a right to challenge their detention in a civilian court.

    Even suspected terrorists have rights? Yes Virginia, in a nation governed by "the rule of law", even suspected terrorists have the right to habeas corpus or the right to know what they are charged with and who is their accuser. Any nation governed by "the rule of law" does not indefinitely detain anyone without charges or the right to defend themselves. The Bush Administration has shown the highest disregard for "the rule of law" in carrying out it's so called "War On Terror". Thank God for the ACLU and it's decades long commitment to preserving the Constitutional civil liberties of all persons on American soil. Hopefully President Elect Obama will conduct the war against international terrorism with respect for "the rule of law". That would be the "change we need" after eight years of the Bush Administration, as I see it.

tags: aclu  bush  war on terror  war  warpeace  rule of law  supreme court  takebackamerica  

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