'Enemy Combatant' Languishes In A South Carolina Brig

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/46430/

'Enemy Combatant' Languishes in a South Carolina Brig

By A.C. Thompson, The Progressive. Posted January 15, 2007.

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Some three-and-a-half years ago, the Pentagon effectively disappeared al-Marri, dubbing him an "enemy combatant," confining him to a solitary cell in the military brig at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina. For seventeen interrogation-heavy months, they barred him even from talking to his attorneys. Now they are the only ones he can talk to.

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Thus we know very, very little about al-Marri. What does his voice sound like? Is it smooth or raspy? Is it a deep baritone or whiny and high-pitched or somewhere in between? What about his eyes? Do they flit around anxiously? Do they lock onto the person he’s conversing with? Does he cast them sullenly towards the floor?

We can’t tell you.

Is he, as the government contends, an Al Qaeda operative connected to the 9/11 attacks, a guy who surreptitiously moved around money for jihadists and cooked up chemical warfare recipes on his home computer?

We can’t tell you.

Could he be innocent, a victim of this paranoid age?

We can’t tell you.

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Now, thanks to recent moves by the administration of George W. Bush -- moves that reflect a drastic restructuring of the American justice system -- al-Marri could languish in this purgatory for decades to come without facing any sort of trial.

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