On September 10, 2001, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 35, relocated
with his missus and five small children from his home in Qatar to
Peoria, Illinois. Never partial to the old 9 to 5, Mr. al-Marri
preferred the leafy campus of his alma mater Bradley University,
where he studied the dark arts of computer science.
Whether he actually attended classes is unclear. According to
the FBI, al-Marri rarely put in an appearance on campus. The
university maintains he was not even enrolled in the graduate
program, only taking a few classes — and failing those.
Thanks to the website Collegefreedom.org, we now have a better idea what
al-Marri was up to and it wasn’t panty raids on the Tri Delta
house. Three months after returning to Peoria he was indicted for
credit card fraud and lying to the FBI. Later, telephone records
would connect al-Marri to three conspirators in the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, including ringleader Mohammed Atta and Mustafa
Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, a suspected financier of the hijackers. The
government also learned that al-Marri had trained at an al Qaeda
terrorist camp in Afghanistan for about a year and a half between
1996 and 1998, where he specialized in poisons.
On his laptop computer agents found a treasure trove of jihadi
paraphernalia: an Arabic prayer asking Allah to protect Osama bin
Laden, files of audio lectures by bin Laden and his gang advocating
martyrdom and tax deductible donations to the Taliban, and advice
on how to apply for membership in one of Osama’s cushy Hindu Kush
camps. Agents also found links to various websites containing the
secrets to obtaining and preparing hazardous chemicals, weapons and
satellite equipment, and a folder labeled “jihad arena” chock full
of information on hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas used in
chemical weapons.
When bored, al-Marri evidently collected credit card numbers,
for the FBI found files containing more than 1,750 of them. He also
had a fondness for computer hacking, fake driver’s licenses and
credit card fraud websites, which he bookmarked liberally.
His curiosity about America was insatiable. Bookmarked pages in
an almanac identified major U.S. dams, reservoirs, waterways and
railroads. And he loved gadgets of all kinds. Inside his green
minivan, agents found a hand-held global positioning system.
THERE SEEMS LITTLE doubt that al-Marri was a sleeper agent who was
way too busy to sleep. The question for the past five years has
been what to do with him. Justice Department officials would like
to keep him locked away indefinitely in a South Carolina naval brig
as an enemy combatant. But this week the Clinton-appointed majority
on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit ordered that al-Marri’s case be treated like any other
domestic terror-related case (the court cited the case of the
Unabomber as an example), despite the fact that, unlike the
Unabomber, al-Marri is a conscript for an international
organization with whom America is supposedly at war. And since the
accused was in the country legally, he had a constitutional right
to due process. Anything less would violate the U.S.
Constitution.
“Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to
order the military to seize civilians residing within the United
States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process,
and this is so even if he calls them ‘enemy combatants,’” wrote
Judge Diana Gribbon Motz. In other words, the court doesn’t care
what you call al-Marri — enemy combatant, sleeper agent, chew toy
— he gets the same protection as every legal criminal
resident.
To read Judge Motz’s opinion you would think the court’s ruling
was all that stood in the way of the nation rapidly descending into
some kind of post-apocalyptic military rule, with stormtroopers
roaming the streets arresting people with whiskers and swarthy
skin, labeling them terrorists, and tossing them for all eternity
into the brig. And the Left was quick to agree.
“When our government locks away people incommunicado,
indefinitely, in a military brig, without charging them, it invites
comparison to some of the world’s most abusive regimes, now and in
the past,” wrote former Justice Department ethics adviser Jesselyn
Radack.
Ironically, since Al-Marri was arrested on U.S. soil, he is
entitled to considerably more rights and protections than enemy
combatants captured overseas and now held at Guantanamo Bay or the
secret CIA prisons in Poland we keep hearing about. One lesson for
smart would-be terrorists has got to be that there are benefits to
murdering people on American soil. Put that in your majority
opinion, Judge Motz.
Christopher Orlet writes the Existential Journalist
blog.
