The Washington Post had an editorial today about the case of suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Al-Marri.

Al-Marri had been held in military detention without charges since 2003, but President Obama recently transferred him into the civilian justice system:

President Obama late last month directed the Defense Department to relinquish control of Mr. Marri to federal law enforcement officials. On the same day, an indictment charging Mr. Marri with conspiracy and providing material support to a terrorist organization was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois.

At the time, al-Marri had an appeal pending before the Supreme Court:

…the Supreme Court was to hear an appeal by Mr. Marri in April challenging the president’s authority to indefinitely detain without charge a person who was lawfully in the country and has been designated an enemy combatant.

The WP editorial offered this advice to the Supreme Court on what they should do with the pending appeal:

The justices should dispose of the case, since there is no longer a live controversy. They should also take the affirmative step of vacating the lower court ruling that served as the basis of Mr. Marri’s appeal. That ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with the Bush administration and recognized the president’s right to indefinitely hold Mr. Marri. Vacating the judgment would erase the precedential power of the decision. Not only would this provide a greater guarantee that Mr. Marri will remain in the federal system and be tried in it, but it would help ensure that no other president would have at the ready a court decision essentially allowing him or her to “disappear” another person. And it would send a message that any future such attempt would not sit well with the justices.

And that’s exactly what the Supreme Court has now done.

The Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge by suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Al-Marri to the president’s authority to detain people without charges, granting an Obama administration request to end the high court case.
[...]
The Supreme Court’s order Friday gives al-Marri and civil liberties groups part of what they wanted, by also throwing out the federal appeals court ruling al-Marri was challenging that affirmed the president’s power to detain people in the United States without trial.

Since neither the WP editorial nor the AP report of the Supreme Court decision make this clear, it’s worth underlining that the dismissal of al-Marri’s appeal was a foregone conclusion, once he had been transferred into the civilian justice system and charged.

The only uncertainty was whether the Supreme Court would overturn the appeals court ruling. Good to see that they did.