The Rough Justice of War

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032355,00.html

Is prosecution getting too aggressive? Two thorny new cases, both against U.S. citizens, spotlight the difficulty of melding American legal principles with the global pursuit of terrorists. TIME investigates the charges against AHMED OMAR ABU ALI, who is accused of plotting to kill President Bush, and ILARIO PANTANO, a Marine officer who allegedly killed two Iraqis in cold blood

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali says he survived torture in a Saudi prison. Now the 23-year-old American, indicted on questionable charges of involvement in an alleged al-Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush, faces another tough challenge: the puzzling vagaries of post-9/11 U.S. justice. The son of Jordanian immigrants from Falls Church, Va., Abu Ali was arrested in a security sweep on June 9, 2003, while taking an exam at the Islamic University of Medina. He then languished for months in a Saudi jail. He was interrogated and, his family claims, tortured. All the while, U.S. and Saudi investigators played a game of hot potato, each country hoping the other would charge Abu Ali with a crime.

The Saudis ultimately found that they could not build a case against him, but they did not want Abu Ali running around their country. U.S. officials, who say Abu Ali "was not on the radar screen" before the Saudis arrested him, developed a deep interest in him once they did but also had trouble lining up sufficient evidence. Finally, Abu Ali's family filed a civil suit last summer to get him returned to the U.S., forcing the Justice Department's hand. The Saudis, eager to avoid the p.r. nightmare of putting an American citizen on trial for terrorism, were relieved to hustle Abu Ali aboard an FBI flight to Washington. Now it was the U.S. that faced a deadline to indict him or let him go.

At least Abu Ali can now have his day in court--an American court. The charges the U.S. filed against him, detailed in a six-count federal indictment unsealed last week, certainly sounded explosive, centering on the young man's alleged talk that he was ready to kill the President, by either shooting him in the street or setting off a car bomb. But like a number of other high-profile U.S. terrorism prosecutions since 9/11 that have grabbed big headlines only to quietly fizzle or stall in trial--from alleged terrorist flight student Zacarias Moussaoui and accused dirty bomber Jose Padilla to the Detroit sleeper cell and former enemy combatant Yaser Hamdi--the case against Abu Ali may not play out so dramatically. "He fell in with some bad people but probably never did much himself but talk," says a source in the Middle East who has knowledge of the case. "Prosecutors have an uphill battle."

Perhaps their toughest yet. Though U.S. and Saudi investigators say they have strong suspicions that Abu Ali was a committed al-Qaeda believer keen to plan terrorist attacks, neither country could tie him to a specific operation in the works. The circumstances of his Saudi detention will also be an issue. Once the Saudis decided they didn't have much of a case, they believed they were doing the U.S. a favor by letting the FBI park Abu Ali there, says a source close to the case. The Americans insist the Saudis were not merely keeping Abu Ali on ice but, in the words of a State Department official, "wanted this guy. They thought they could charge him." Either way, the situation came to a head when federal District Judge John Bates ruled that the U.S. might have to disclose its role in the detention.


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