Prosecutors are preparing to charge and transfer to the US court system the last “enemy combatant” held in the country, media said on Thursday, in one of US President Barack Obama’s sharpest breaks with the Bush administration.
Federal prosecutors were preparing to charge Ali al-Marri with providing support to al-Qaeda, the Washington Post said citing sources familiar with the case.
The action would be a significant departure from the administration of former US president George W. Bush, which argued that Marri should be tried before a special military tribunal and not be allowed to use US courts to contest his legal status.
A citizen of Qatar, Marri and his family arrived legally in the US one day before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
He was arrested three months later while attending a university in Peoria, Illinois, and has been held without charge for the past five and a half years as an “enemy combatant” in a military brig in South Carolina.
Bush’s administration had argued that unlawful enemy combatants captured in the “war on terror” did not have the same rights as US criminals or prisoners of war, arguing the detainees were not associated with conventional armies.
But Obama ordered a review of the Marri case shortly after taking office, at the same time that he ordered the closure within a year of the “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 240 suspects, also labeled enemy combatants, are being held.
The Obama administration could announce the Marri charges in federal court by the end of the week, the Post reported.
The fundamental shift could signify that the government is inching towards processing some of the prisoners being held indefinitely at Guantanamo in the US court system.
“If true, the decision to charge Marri is an important step in restoring the rule of law and is what should have happened seven years ago when he was first arrested,” Jonathan Hafetz, one of Marri’s lawyers, said in a statement.
Hafetz nevertheless insisted that this potentially crucial legal step not block his client’s case coming up before the US Supreme Court in April, a case which would challenge Bush’s position that the president has authority to hold indefinitely and without charge a person declared an enemy combatant.
“It is vital that the Supreme Court case go forward because it must be made clear once and for all that indefinite military detention of persons arrested in the US is illegal and that this will never happen again,” the lawyer said.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS