This is a post I wrote for the Red County National page and was their featured article earlier this afternoon. It’s a reversal because generally my RC pieces start here and then go to that site. But I was asked to take on more reporterly assignments for the RC site and this is my first.
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In case you missed it, last Thursday a federal judge reduced the sentence of an al-Qaeda sleeper agent and enabled him to be freed– in just five years.
Disdaining a maximum fifteen-year sentence, U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm, a Reagan appointee who recently announced his retirement upon confirmation of a successor, sentenced Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri to eight years and four months in prison. al-Marri’s legal team pled for a shorter sentence based on time served as an enemy combatant before his case was shifted from the military justice system to a civilian court in February, shortly after President Obama took office.
The defendant, a citizen of both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, was taken into military custody in June 2003 after the Bush Administration reviewed his case and determined he was an enemy combatant. While al-Marri’s legal team maintained he had the right to habeas corpus in 2004, the request was denied because of his non-citizen status and al-Marri remained in military prison. Once his case was moved to an Illinois federal court earlier this year, al-Marri pled guilty to one count of conspiring to provide support to terrorists, which carries the maximum penalty of fifteen years in prison.
Al-Marri, who graduated from Bradley University in 1991, purportedly returned to the United States with his wife and five children on September 10, 2001 to pursue graduate studies at the school, but in fact he rarely attended classes. He was first detained shortly after the September 11 attacks, and FBI agents found links on his laptop computer to sites of distributors of hydrogen cyanide, programs for computer hacking software and “proxy” software, as well. They also found dozens of bogus credit card numbers listed in al-Marri’s laptop case.
It was deemed that possible targets he had in his sights included a number of dams and reservoirs, apparently part of an abortive plot to poison a domestic water supply.
Phone records acquired as part of the al-Marri investigation also reveal a number of calls placed to Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, a leading financier of al-Qaeda, at a phone number based in the United Arab Emirates. It’s also alleged that al-Marri used an alias and dummy company to falsify credit card transactions during an earlier visit to the United States in 2000.
Yet despite the strong evidence that al-Marri was a “continuing grave threat” as an al-Qaeda operative, Judge Mihm reduced his sentence based on time already served. Worse, he credited al-Marri nine months for time served in military custody, in what his defense attorneys argued were “harsh” conditions!
While Judge Mihm may have been swayed by al-Marri’s tearful defense testimony where he claimed he “was glad I have no blood on my hand,” make no mistake: al Marri was an al Qaeda sleeper dedicated to doing great harm to America. Witness this statement from a now-unclassified declaration by Jeffery N. Rapp, Director of the Joint Intelligence Task Force on Combating Terrorism:
“Multiple intelligence sources confirm that Al-Marri is an al Qaeda “sleeper” agent sent to the United States for the purpose of engaging in and facilitating terrorist activities subsequent to September 11, 2001, and exploring ways to hack into the computer systems of U.S. banks and otherwise disrupt the U.S. financial system. Prior to arriving in the United States on September 10, 2001, Al-Marri was trained at an al Qaeda terror camp. He met personally with Osama Bin Laden (Bin Laden) and other known al Qaeda members and volunteered for a martyr mission or to do anything else that al Qaeda requested. Al-Marri was assisted in his al Qaeda assignment to the United States by known al Qaeda members and travelled to the United States with money provided for him by al Qaeda. Al-Marri currently possesses information of high intelligence value, including information about personnel and activities of Al Qaeda.
Yet this reality didn’t faze Judge Mihm: “My personal belief as a judge is that (treatment) was totally unacceptable. That’s not who we are,” he remarked.
The lenient sentence for al-Marri rightly worries domestic security advocates who already question the wisdom of trying detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay in civilian courts. Mihm’s light sentence and his consideration of time served under military custody could set a precedent for future trials of the more than 200 detainees presently held in Cuba.
Thus, in just over five years, a known al-Qaeda operative will be free to return to his homeland and hatch more terrorist plots against America and her allies. With national security still in peril by those allied with al-Qaeda, punishment meted out off the battlefield isn’t proving to be a strong deterrent against recruiting America-hating terrorists either overseas or domestically.
The sentence also shows that the January announcement by President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay by next year may do further damage to national security now and in the future. Placing the fate of suspected terrorists in the hands of civilian judges will prove harmful to both the concept of justice and the plan to deter Islamic terrorism on our own soil.
Hopefully, last week’s sentencing travesty gave our young administration a dose of reality; perhaps now it will re-consider its plans to grant terrorists access to our courtrooms, a battlefield on which we most certainly will lose.
The problem with your view is that it would give the president vast authority to label anyone he so chooses as an “enemy combatant” and there would be no check on that decision. Do you really want to give President Obama (or anyone for that matter) the authority to lock up literally anyone he chooses and that person has no way to appeal that decision? Setting up some sort of military tribunal is also fraught with problems since these are heavily rigged against the accused.
I agree that the situation you described isn’t a good one. However, the alternative is even worse from my perspective. If we end up preventing terrorist attacks on our soil by granting essentially dictatorial powers to our president then that’s hardly a victory.
I couldn’t agree more Marc. If anything I’m not sure you’ve gone far enough in highlighting the dangers of such an approach.
I think this piece from League of Ordinary Gentlemen (http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/11/how-could-this-happen/) makes clear another key problem with an acceptance of these sort of governmental powers. There’s something fundamentally wrong with the U.S. engaging in this sort of behaviour and no one being called to task for it.
Are you saying that a man who essentially admitted to several counts of fraud and money laundering should go unpunished? I don’t agree with the finding of the judge and believe he should have gotten the maximum sentence.
Nor do I think that the conditions al-Marri alleged were overly harsh. My original submission compared the treatment he claimed he received at the Navy brig to that he incurred willingly at an al-Qaeda camp. It’s a pity that the Red County editor removed that line because I thought it was a great one.
It’s not like the decision to determine al-Marri was an enemy combatant was made lightly. You may find this helpful as it was one piece of information I was provided.
All I’m saying is that the president should not have the power to determine someone is an “enemy combatant” and not have that determination subject to independent judicial review. If you give the president the authority to indefinitely lock up anyone he chooses and that person has no chance to challenge that detention, then the president is essentially a dictator. Do you agree with giving the president this authority, Michael?
But he did have the chance to challenge his detention and he lost based on the fact he was a non-citizen.
I understand your fear of the situation being abused and part of that is on voters to not elect someone who would abuse the power. In this case, I believe President Bush – as Commander-in-Chief – was correct based on the evidence I saw. And it’s not like the charges came out of thin air.
Again, I disagree with the reduction of sentence based on treatment al-Marri was alleged to have suffered. Since al-Marri pleaded guilty to the actual charge, even he admitted he should be punished somehow for running afoul of the law.
If you are relying on voters to elect someone who won’t abuse his power, then you are essentially advocating the rule of men, not the rule of law. We are a government of laws, not of men. It shouldn’t matter if the most corrupt idiot were elected, he shouldn’t have the power to infringe upon our liberties.
And so what if al-Marri was a non-citizen? Is it OK for the president to be able to detain anyone he wishes with no review as long as that person isn’t a citizen? Plus, Bush and Cheney advocated the president being able to do this to anyone, citizen or non-citizen. And if I recall correctly there was some support for the president being able to strip U.S. citizens of their citizenship if he determined they were “terrorists.”
The fact that al-Marri was able to receive a reduced sentence because of his treatment indicates the failure of the Bush policy of treating detainees. Besides being a violation of both human rights and U.S. law, the torture these men received undercuts any legal cases against them. If you support punishing these men, then you should be pretty upset that the idiotic policies pursued by Bush make obtaining that punishment much more difficult.