RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 31 (UPI) -- An appeals court in Richmond, Va., heard testimony Wednesday regarding the Bush administration's designation of a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considered the detention of Ali Saleh al-Marri at a naval bring in Charleston, S.C., after the Bush administration declared him as an enemy combatant in 2003.
The case involves the constitutional ability of the president to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely as part of his wartime powers, the Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday.
U.S. officials arrested Marri in Illinois in December 2001 for suspicion of being an al-Qaida agent involved in a second wave of attacks following Sept. 11.
Bush administration lawyers argue the battlefield in the U.S. counter-terrorism effort includes U.S. territory, noting the president would be “without the authority to use the military force” to prevent another Sept. 11 attack.
Critics question the ability of the president to use his wartime powers to order U.S. citizens into military custody for conspiring to commit terrorist acts, the Monitor said.
Marri’s defense team said the Bush administration zealously blurred the distinction between civil and military jurisdiction in this case.
“The government has sought here an unprecedented and whole erasure of that line,” Marri’s lawyers said in a brief on his behalf.
