Detainee in U.S. pursues new claim
on Mar 13, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Lawyers for the only detainee now being held inside the U.S. as an “enemy combatant” on Thursday opened a new challenge to his confinement, arguing that his constitutional rights have been violated by the conditions under which he has been held for almost five years. Raising an array of new issues over the rights of detanees not charged or convicted of a crime, the motion filed in U.S. District Court in South Carolina asked for a prompt order to ease his conditions at the U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.
The motion of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, filed in Al-Marri v. Gates (District Court docket 05-2259), can be downloaded here. Exhibits attached to the motion are here.
Specifically, the request for “interim relief” seeks an order that, “at a minimum,” would require the government to permit “regular and frequent (monitored) telephone calls with immediate family members,”who are now in Saudi Arabia; to ensure rapid processing of correspondence from his family including letters and digital recordings, to grant him “unrestricted access to news” in print and broadcsst outlets, and to ensure “full and prompt access to religious texts for the exercise of his faith.”
Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was legally in the U.S. as a college student, was captured at his home in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001. President Bush designated him an “enemy combatant” on June 23, 2003, and he was then sent to the brig in Charleston. He has remained there since under conditions that his lawyers contend amount to torture. During his confinement, his mental condition has deteriorated, his lawyers assert, so that he has begun to feel he is losing his mind.
Since August 2005, he has been challenging the conditions of his detention by the military. The Justice Department has sought to have that challenge dismissed, but the District Court has yet to act on that motion. Al-Marri also is involved in a case, now pending before the en banc Fourth Circuit Court, challenging his designation as an “enemy combatant.”
The case challenging his confinement conditions is separate from the Fourth Circuit proceeding. The new motion for “interim relief from prolonged isolation and other unlawful conditions of confinement” is part of the case his lawyers have been pursuing since August 2005.
Interim relief, his motion asserted, “is necessary to prevent Mr. Almarri’s further deterioration and to preserve his ability to participate meaningfully in his legal defense.”
The claims include an argument that his First Amendment rights are violated by denial of access to news and books, that the series of deprivations and limitations on his daily life violate his right to due process, and that restrictions on his practice of his religious beliefs violate his rights under the Religious Freedom Restroation Act.
Attached to the new motion are two exhibits, a sworn statemen by one of Al-Marri’s attorneys, chronicling the attorney’s observations since October 2004, and by a psychiatrist who has done an evaluation of Al-Marri’s reaction to his confinement based on information supplied by the attorney. Al-Marri’s lawyers have sought access to him for a mental health expert, but that has been denied.
