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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court could hand President-elect Barack Obama a delicate problem in the coming days: what to do with a suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent who is the only person detained in this country as an enemy combatant. Ali al-Marri has been held in virtual isolation in a Navy brig near Charleston for nearly 5½ years. He is challenging President Bush’s authority to subject a legal resident of the United States to indefinite military detention without being charged or tried. The justices are expected to consider al-Marri’s case when they meet in private Tuesday. If they agree to hear...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

WASHINGTON - If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply. But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different. Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack. To justify...

Al-qaida military chief killed, taliban confirms The military chief of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was killed along with seven colleagues in a US bombing raid three days ago, a Taliban official has confirmed. Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official in the south-east Afghan border town of Spinboldak, confirmed Atef's death but would not identify the location of the airstrike or the other al-Qaida members who died with him. It was the first time a senior Taliban official has confirmed Friday's claim by US officials that Atef was killed in an airstrike outside Kabul. Atef's death is seen as a ...

Excerpt: Use of poisons U.S. intelligence officials believe that Marri trained for two years in Afghanistan, among other things receiving instruction in the use of poisons and toxins at the Derunta camp near Jalalabad, sources said. He is believed to have trained under Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian specialist in chemical and biological weapons who was killed ... *** U.S. authorities allege that Marri had gone to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the Sept. 11 plotters. *** The Islamic Assembly of North America,...

Last week, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the case of al-Marri vs. Wright that a terrorist lawfully in the U.S. cannot be detained as an enemy combatant without a trial if he never fought against U.S. forces on a foreign battlefield or if he was not sent to the U.S. by the government of a nation with whom we are at war. Since al Qaeda is a transnational organization responsible to no government, Ali al-Marri, a resident alien and an al Qaeda sleeper agent operating in the U.S. could not be held as an enemy combatant...

On Monday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that al Qaeda agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri can't be detained as an enemy combatant. The press corps is reporting--no, shouting, cheering, doing somersaults--that this is further proof that Bush Administration detainee policies are doomed to legal oblivion. Well, here's a wager: This decision is the outlier and will be overturned on appeal, while most of the Administration's legal antiterror architecture will survive past January 20, 2009. Any takers?

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The Bush administration cannot use new anti-terrorism laws to keep U.S. residents locked up indefinitely without charging them, a divided federal appeals court said Monday. The ruling was a harsh rebuke of one of the central tools the administration believes it has to combat terror. "To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them 'enemy combatants,' would have disastrous consequences for the constitution—and the country," the court panel said. In the 2-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found that the...

WASHINGTON - Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees. In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in...

It started with a police officer's intuition in a Central Peoria neighborhood just south of Northwoods Mall three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Peoria officer noticed a car was being driven erratically and pulled it over. The driver had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court 10 years before on another infraction, and offered to pay a cash bond on the spot, even reaching into a briefcase full of money. Something just didn't feel right, so the officer hauled the driver in on the warrant as well as the new traffic ticket. That everyday...

Revelations in the Peoria Journal Star earlier this week that the Peoria/Champaign area is one of seven in the United States on a terrorist “circuit” were frightening. “Terrorists enter the United States in San Francisco and Los Angeles, then move to Phoenix, then Denver," reported Phil Luciano of the PJS. "From there some head to Peoria and Champaign. Some terrorists remain in those communities, while others head on to New York City" (emphasis added). Luciano was provided this information by Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy, who received it at a recent FBI conference held in Springfield. Names of larger cities...

Former West Peorian Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri has been locked up as an enemy combatant, but his terrorist comrades continue to work in central Illinois. Peoria and Champaign are part of a seven-city "circuit" that moves and disperses terrorists to specific sites across the nation, says Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy. McCoy got that information at a recent FBI conference in Springfield. He shares that snippet of intelligence not to panic central Illinois, but to stress what the FBI told police at the conference: America, including much of its law-enforcement community, has not taken seriously enough the threat of al-Qaida...

Former West Peorian Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri has been locked up as an enemy combatant, but his terrorist comrades continue to work in central Illinois. Peoria and Champaign are part of a seven-city "circuit" that moves and disperses terrorists to specific sites across the nation, says Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy. McCoy got that information at a recent FBI conference in Springfield. He shares that snippet of intelligence not to panic central Illinois, but to stress what the FBI told police at the conference: America, including much of its law-enforcement community, has not taken seriously enough the threat of al-Qaida...

Peoria County sheriff says Champaign also among 7 stopovers Former West Peorian Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri has been locked up as an enemy combatant, but his terrorist comrades continue to work in central Illinois. Peoria and Champaign are part of a seven-city "circuit" that moves and disperses terrorists to specific sites across the nation, says Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy. McCoy got that information at a recent FBI conference in Springfield. He shares that snippet of intelligence not to panic central Illinois, but to stress what the FBI told police at the conference: America, including much of its law-enforcement community,...

<p>An Army Islamic chaplain, who counseled al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, has been charged with espionage, aiding the enemy and spying, The Washington Times has learned.</p> <p>Capt. James J. Yee, a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was arrested earlier this month by the FBI in Jacksonville, Fla., as he arrived on a military charter flight from Guantanamo, according to a law-enforcement source.</p>

<p>A U.S.-born man captured in Afghanistan has joined two other men deemed enemy combatants at the Navy brig at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.</p> <p>Yasser Esam Hamdi was transferred to the brig near Hanahan from Norfolk, Va., on July 30, Maj. Michael Shavers said.</p>

<p>The Qatari native held as an "enemy combatant" because of suspected ties to terrorists personally met in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda members, where he pledged his loyalty and offered himself as a martyr, federal authorities say.</p>

June 24— The Qatari man designated an enemy combatant by the Bush administration was planning another Sept. 11 attack, sources told ABCNEWS. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, 37, was deemed an enemy combatant by the Bush administration on Monday after officials said he was positively identified by an al Qaeda detainee as being part of a planned second wave of terror attacks on the United States. Government officials said they believed al Qaeda's top leadership sent Al-Marri to the United States to coordinate a new round of attacks. "Al-Marri was sent to the United States as a facilitator for other al...

<p>A Qatar native held on charges of lying to the FBI in an investigation into the September 11 attacks was designated yesterday as an "enemy combatant" and could be tried before a military tribunal for helping al Qaeda operatives relocate in the United States. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, 37, in Justice Department custody since late 2001, was given the new designation by President Bush and handed over to the Defense Department.</p>

Qatari Man Designated Enemy Combatant POSTED: 3:16 p.m. EDT June 23, 2003 UPDATED: 3:32 p.m. EDT June 23, 2003 WASHINGTON -- A man from Qatar has been designated as an enemy combatant of the United States -- for allegedly paving the way for al-Qaida operatives to settle in the United States. Ali Saleh Kahlah Al Marri has been in custody since 2001. The government's move puts him under the control of the Defense Department, without the rights afforded defendants in the civilian criminal justice system. Al Marri is accused of lying to the FBI, and also of credit card fraud....

In the 16 months since the Sept. 11 attacks, thousands of Middle Eastern men have been questioned and detained by the FBI. Many Americans have wondered what became of these people. How many were actually terrorists? How many were actually rabid followers of Osama Bin Laden's jihad against America? One of them, Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri — a 37-year-old from Qatar who returned to the United States on Sept. 10, 2001, less than 24 hours before the World Trade Center attacks — has become the target of a massive terrorism investigation. FBI agents first questioned Al-Marri at his West Peoria,...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) — FBI agents searching telephone records have linked a 36-year-old Illinois student to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to newly unsealed court papers.</p> <p>Ali Salem Kahlah Al-Marri has not been charged with any role in the September 11 terrorist attacks, and his attorney, Richard Jasper Jr., questioned the link.</p>

FBI Agents Say Phone Records Link Illinois Student to Sept. 11 TerroristsBy Mike Robinson Associated Press WriterPublished: Mar 20, 2002 CHICAGO (AP) - FBI agents searching telephone records have linked a 36-year-old Illinois student to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to newly unsealed court papers. Ali Salem Kahlah Al-Marri has not been charged with any role in the Sept. 11 attacks and his lawyer, Richard Jasper Jr., questioned the link. Al-Marri was arrested Jan. 28 and is being held in New York on a federal charge of unlawful possession of more than 15 credit...