High Court to examine Marri terror case

 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court could take up a terrorism-related case challenging the President's broad powers of detention, observers say.

The High Court will decide Monday whether to accept the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah Marri, a legal U.S. resident who was whisked into military detention in 2003 when Bush administration officials charged he was an al-Qaida operative plotting a wave of post-Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Washington Post reported.

Marri was on trial in federal court in 2003 charged with using a false name and a stolen Social Security number to apply for bank accounts in Macomb, Ill., when Bush ordered he be turned over to the military. Marri was taken to a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina where he's been held ever since, the newspaper said.

"That the president can order the military to seize someone from their home, their business, from the streets and lock them up in jail potentially forever, without trial, goes against 230 years of American precedent and the basic idea that this country was founded on," Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Marri, told the Post.