U.S. Suffers Setback in Case Of Alleged Enemy Combatant

Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor and former Justice Department official, said that Marri has a "reasonable basis" to demand a proceeding to determine his status, but that his chances of forcing a release or transfer to a criminal court are small.

Justice Department and Pentagon officials have consistently declined to comment on the case.

Marri's attorneys dismiss the newly disclosed allegations as "triple hearsay evidence" inadmissible in court and say many of them may have been obtained through torture. Although the document does not identify its sources, much of the information revolves around two al-Qaeda leaders being held in overseas CIA prisons: Mohammed and alleged al-Qaeda financier Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.

"Thus far, there is no evidence," said Jonathan Hafetz of the New York University School of Law, one of the attorneys representing Marri. "All there is now is a hearsay statement, a list of allegations. . . . They think they can hold him without charge for essentially the rest of his life, and obviously we dispute that."

Marri lived in the United States in the 1990s and graduated from Bradley University in Peoria. He returned to the country on Sept. 10, 2001, the day before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He was arrested on credit-card fraud charges in December of that year, but a month before his trial was to start he was transferred into military custody.

Rapp's court filing calls Marri "an al Qaeda 'sleeper' agent sent to the United States for the purpose of engaging in and facilitating terrorist activities," and it alleges that he volunteered for a martyr mission during a meeting with bin Laden and trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan for as many as 19 months from 1996 to 1998. According to the filing, Marri was trained in the "use of poisons" at one camp.

During a search of Marri's laptop computer, the document says, the FBI found files on how to make a deadly toxin; more than 1,000 credit card numbers; and lists of Web sites related to jihad, weapons and satellites.

"The highly technical information found on Marri's laptop computer far exceeds the interests of a merely curious individual," the filing says.