With terrorist guilty plea, court scores where illegal detention failed

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Newsweek correspondent Michael Isikoff was jubilant at the outcome, telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “Score one for the criminal justice system.”

Accused al Qaeda “sleeper” operative Ali al-Marri pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda.

According to Isikoff, the Obama administration’s decision to try al-Marri in criminal court has accomplished what the Bush administration was unable to achieve with over seven years of illegal detention and “enhanced” interrogation techniques. It has not only established the facts about al-Marri’s own terrorist activities but has made him available as a witness in further trials.

Isikoff explained that al-Marri was detained in December 2001 and was suspected of plotting a second wave of al Qaeda attacks. “But rather than charging him in a criminal court, the Bush administration designated him an enemy combatant, stripped him of al. his Constitutional rights … and threw him in a military brig, denied him access to a lawyer, subjected him to ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques … and [he] wasn’t charged with any crime.”

“This prompted a huge constitutional debate,” Isikoff continued, “as to whether or not a president can simply unilaterally strip somebody of his rights.” The case was all set to go to the Supreme Court this winter when the Obama administration took al-Marri out of the military brig and charged him with conspiracy. “And today, amazingly, he pled guilty to some pretty significant set of facts.”

“In less than two months, we’ve learned the truth about Ali al-Marri,” Isikoff noted, “which is that he was, in fact, an al Qaeda sleeper agent — something that for the previous five and a half years, the US government had been unable to learn. … This guy was, in fact, the dangerous dude that a lot of law enforcement and intelligence officials thought he was all along … but the fact is, it was only learned through the criminal justice system.”

“As a result of this guilty plea,” Isikoff concluded, “Ali al-Marri can be called into federal court at a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and asked to simply recite the facts that he pled guilty to today. … The Justice Department is going to have direct evidence against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as an al Qaeda conspirator trying to attack the United States without having to use any of the tainted evidence it got through waterboarding and the other enhanced interrogation techniques.”