[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
United States News Title: Book ties enemy combatant to L.A. plot CHARLESTON, S.C. — Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is the last enemy combatant imprisoned in this country. Yet four years after his arrest, government officials still cannot agree on what threat he posed. In a new allegation, former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft says Al-Marri was sent to the United States a day before the Sept. 11 attacks to plan strikes on West Coast targets, including the tallest building in Los Angeles. Ashcroft's claim — made in a new book — is the first time any U.S. official has directly linked Al-Marri to the West Coast attacks that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden allegedly hoped would follow the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Citing Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was captured and interrogated, Ashcroft wrote: "I believe KSM had planned to use Al-Marri to help facilitate this next wave of attacks focused on Los Angeles." But three federal law enforcement officials asked about the allegation said they were mystified by Ashcroft's assertions. And a court document alleging that Al-Marri — a U.S.-educated citizen of Qatar and Saudi Arabia — has deep ties to Al Qaeda makes no mention of any role in an assault on the West Coast. Plot broken up Speaking confidentially because they did not want a public fight with the former attorney general, the Washington officials said the West Coast plot was broken up by arrests overseas that did not involve Al-Marri. They said Al-Marri was sent to the United States as an Al Qaeda "sleeper agent" and was not assigned to prepare an attack on any specific target. With his wife and five children, they said Al Qaeda leaders hoped he could reside unnoticed in Peoria, Ill., where he had once lived and attended school. "He was never given any assignment," said one of the officials familiar with government intelligence on the West Coast plot. "KSM may have considered him as an operative, but that's about it." He acknowledged, however, that Ashcroft's contention "might still be a possibility." The dispute is spilling onto the public stage as the Bush administration finds itself under mounting legal and public pressure to provide some form of justice for captives arrested in the U.S. and abroad. The disagreement also shows there are deep divisions within the government over what to make of enemy combatants. Al-Marri's defense lawyers have repeatedly called on the government to either charge him with a crime or set him free, saying his endless solitary confinement at a Navy brig next to Charleston violates the founding principles of American jurisprudence. But twice this year different federal judges in South Carolina have denied their request and ruled that the Bush administration can continue to legally — and indefinitely — hold Al-Marri as an enemy combatant. Al-Marri's defense attorneys have appealed, and the government, seeking to cut them off again, recently signaled it may bring Al-Marri before a military tribunal similar to those planned for Mohammed and other detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Why Ashcroft is raising this assertion now is unclear. He did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. In his book, "Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice," Ashcroft said the second wave was "planned meticulously" by Mohammed with Al-Marri in mind. He wrote that Al-Marri was "part of an Al Qaeda advance team sent to the United States to facilitate the next round of terrorist attacks." But of Al-Marri's arrest, Ashcroft wrote, "I believe it frustrated Al Qaeda's plans for new attacks. The Los Angeles plot unraveled due to international cooperation among America's allies." David Ayres, Ashcroft's former chief of staff at the Department of Justice, said the department reviewed the book for accuracy and classified material. And others suggested the information must have been gleaned by Ashcroft from his four years as attorney general. "Why would he make it up?" wondered Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia who has closely monitored the Al-Marri case. Angry defense lawyers Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|