Yesterday, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri had previously been locked up in a military brig in South Carolina for six years, after the Bush administration declared him an enemy combatant in 2003. The Obama administration indicted him in February. According to the terms of al-Marri's plea agreement, he will serve a maximum of 15 years in prison, rather than the 30 he was facing. His lawyers are attempting to negotiate credit for the time he served in the military brig in Charleston. All told, the path from al-Marri's indictment to guilty plea was less than two months.
"He had his day in court, as he should have had seven years ago," said the ACLU's Jonathan Hafetz, who represented al-Marri in his Supreme Court case. "The Bush administration unnecessarily subverted that system by locking him in military detention."
We've been told for years by those on the right that the criminal justice system would be "unable to handle" trying terrorist suspects. In many cases, this was simply a way of avoiding the fact that the government's evidence was obtained through torture. For others, it was simply a way of justifying indefinite detention without trial, which is unconstitutional. Al-Marri was captured on American soil and has since been held here. Those legislators who protested loudly about the danger posed by imprisoning terrorist suspects on American soil remained silent about al-Marri, who will do his time right here in the United States.
We've been told that terrorists couldn't be tried in the civilian justice system. We've been told that they couldn't be imprisoned on American soil. We've been told that we need to be able to hold terrorists indefinitely, that they're too dangerous to risk trying in open court. What al-Marri's story tells us is that none of these things are true.
-- A. Serwer
