WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush cannot order the military to seize and indefinitely detain a Qatari national and suspected al Qaeda operative, the only person being held in the United States as an “enemy combatant,” an appeals court ruled on Monday.
In a major setback for Bush's policies in the war on terrorism adopted after the September 11 attacks, the appellate panel ruled 2-1 the U.S. government had no evidence to treat Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri as an “enemy combatant.” The court ordered him released from military custody.
The Bush administration has not had a successful experience with the civilian court system in dealing with suspected terrorist operatives in US custody. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled the presidentially mandated tribunals at Guantanamo Bay illegal; the Bush administration did not enjoy its experience with Zacarius Moussaoui in the civilian court system, it was forced to lessen a possible death sentence for an Australian national to 9-months, and it recently had two cases thrown out on jurisdictional grounds at Guantanamo Bay, one of them Hamdan himself, who is alleged to have been UBL's personal body guard.
