Obama detainee stance to get quick test

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The case of a terror detainee held without charges at a U.S. Navy brig will come up soon after U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in, observers say.

The Obama administration will need to submit arguments to the Supreme Court in the scheduled Feb. 20 hearing of Ali Marri, a Qatari student arrested in Peoria, Ill., in a key early test of how the new president will address the Bush administration's controversial anti-terrorism policies, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Marri has been held since December 2001 in a Charleston, S.C., brig as an "enemy combatant." The only terror detainee held on the U.S. mainland, Marri is suspected of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and has been described by intelligence officials as being exceptionally dangerous.

That status makes deporting Marri to Qatar problematic, and complicates Obama's legal options, the newspaper said. Experts maintain trying him on criminal charges would also be difficult partly because some of the evidence against him may have been obtained through torture and would not be admissible.

Spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said Obama "will make decisions about how to handle detainees as president when his full national security and legal teams are in place."