U.S. Asserts Authority Over American in Saudi Jail - Tortured by US Soldiers

A federal district judge ruled Thursday that United States courts had jurisdiction in the case of an American citizen jailed in Saudi Arabia as a terrorism suspect, whose family alleges that he is being kept there and mistreated at the behest of United States law enforcement officials. The ruling by Judge John D. Bates is the latest in a series of court decisions that have rebuffed the Bush administration in its efforts to keep detention policies and actions connected to fighting terrorism beyond the reach of the judiciary. Judge Bates ruled in the case of Ahmed Abu Ali, 23, of Falls Church, Va., who was arrested by Saudi authorities while attending the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in June 2003. The issue in the case was whether the United States government bore some responsibility for him because of credible allegations that American officials had been responsible for his arrest, detention and interrogation. Mr. Abu Ali's family submitted affidavits providing some evidence that the Saudi government had no interest in him, that it was keeping him at the behest of American law enforcement authorities and that American prosecutors had boasted to other terrorism suspects that his fingernails had been torn out. The administration did not respond to most of the allegations. Instead, government lawyers argued that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to require the government to answer questions about someone's detention in cases "where the prisoner is being held by a foreign custodian, even where the United States allegedly has been involved in the prisoner's incarceration in the first place." In his 69-page ruling, Judge Bates said "the United States is, in effect, arguing for nothing less than the unreviewable powers to separate an American citizen from the most fundamental of his constitutional rights merely by choosing where he will be detained or who will detain him." [more]