OPINION: High court takes on president
The U.S. Supreme Court wisely decided to review the case of Ali Saleh Khalah al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident who was apprehended by the federal government and held for more than five years in a Navy brig, where he stands accused of being an al-Qaida operative.
This case was bound to make it to the nation's highest court given the stakes involved. As Bloomberg news succinctly explains, the case also will provide an early test for the new Obama administration. It can side with President George W. Bush's assertion that a president can indefinitely detain legal residents based on suspicions of terrorist activity, or it can call for al-Marri to be tried in civilian court.
Even if al-Marri is an operative sent to the United States to disrupt the financial system the president's approach should be deeply troubling to Americans concerned about unchecked government power. The question is: Does the president have the power to imprison legal American residents indefinitely without filing any charges against them?
The Bush administration tells us that we are at war, and that only a handful of residents have been subjected to such treatment. But anyone concerned about liberty can see the problem. The only standard for detention is the government's belief that one is an enemy of the nation. A person can be imprisoned, denied contact with family members, and even tortured. There's no due process, no chance to have a day in court to state one's case.
This is chilling. A government with such powers could round up its critics with impunity.
Which is why it is crucial that the Supreme Court deny the government the power to do such things and to demand al-Marri be charged with whatever crimes he is suspected of committing and tried in a court of law, or released.
"The al-Marri case involves the power of the military to take any American - repeat any American, including newspaper editors, government critics, and dissidents - into custody and imprison him for the rest of his life as an ‘enemy combatant' in the ‘war on terrorism,'" wrote Jacob Hornberger, president of the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation. "The assumption of such power, if upheld, would constitute one of the greatest transformations of power and liberty in American history. It would fortify the federal government's position as master and that of the citizens as servants."
This is a blockbuster case politically, as the public will get its first glimpse of the thinking of the Obama administration. But it's even a bigger matter regarding the state of the nation's civil liberties.
