Court hears enemy combatant case

The Bush administration exceeded its authority in holding a legal U.S. resident in military custody as a suspected enemy combatant, his lawyer told a federal appeals court Wednesday.

The full U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reheard the case of Ali Marri, who the government claimed had links to Al Qaeda terrorists and was a national security threat. Marri has been held in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., since June 2003.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled 2 to 1 in June that the Military Commissions Act, passed in 2006 to establish military trials, doesn’t strip Marri of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court. The government asked for the rehearing, and a ruling is expected in several weeks.

Marri’s attorney, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, urged the full court to uphold the decision.

“To rule otherwise is to sanction a power the president has never had and was never meant to have,” Hafetz told the court.

Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, who was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush, challenged Hafetz’s assertion that Marri could not be held in military custody because he was not captured on a battlefield. The judge said such a finding would mean “25 or 30 terrorists could sneak into the U.S.” and the military couldn’t stop them.

“That’s remarkable,” Niemeyer said.