The U.S. government's wall of isolation around a man held for more than seven years as an alleged al-Qaida sleeper agent has parted in recent weeks with telephone calls to his family and the chance to read newspapers and magazines, according to one of his brothers.Ali al-Marri, 43, sounds surprisingly strong during the calls from a federal prison in central Illinois, his brother, Naji al-Marri, told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview from his home in Saudi Arabia. Naji al-Marri also insisted his younger brother has no ties to al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, as federal prosecutors have claimed. "I know some of that stuff is not true," said Naji al-Marri, 47. "Because some of the stuff that they're saying (is) something that I know Ali would not do."
Ali al-Marri was arrested in 2001 while attending college in Illinois and accused of plotting terrorist attacks inside the U.S. He had been the last enemy combatant held without charges on U.S. soil until his March move from the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., to the Federal Correctional Institution in Pekin, just south of Peoria. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. His next hearing is April 30 in Peoria.
Since being moved to Pekin, al-Marri has been allowed to call his family once a week, his brother said. Occasional letters had accounted for the only previous contact other than a handful of calls after the Red Cross won him permission following his father's death last year. Naji al-Marri said he never responded to the letters because, at the time, he doubted their authenticity.
Ali al-Marri's telephone calls are monitored by federal authorities and Naji al-Marri said his brother is only allowed to call a Red Cross office in Saudi Arabia about 150 miles from the family's home. Most discussions dwell on what al-Marri has missed since his arrest, his brother said. "His son now, when he was (arrested) he's 8; now he's 16 years old. Can you imagine?" Naji al-Marri said.
Ali al-Marri is kept isolated in a special housing unit in Pekin, according to Andy Savage, one of his attorneys. But the conditions are better, Savage said, than those al-Marri experienced during most of the years he spent alone in South Carolina. Savage has said he faced interrogations and conditions that amounted to torture while in the brig. TV is forbidden, but al-Marri now gets magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Popular Mechanics and fitness and computer magazines, Savage said. "In the case of The New York Times, it has to be reviewed before he gets it," Savage said, adding that he doesn't know why.
Federal prosecutors routinely refuse to comment on al-Marri's case, which a federal judge in Peoria has said he hopes to try by the end of the year. In court documents filed prior to the five years al-Marri was held as an enemy combatant, the government said the Bradley University graduate met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001 and was sent to the U.S. to help al-Qaida operatives carry out attacks following Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Marri had faced credit card fraud charges after his 2001 arrest in Peoria, but those were dropped when he was placed to military custody in June 2003.
In some of the early court documents, FBI agents who searched a computer from al-Marri's Peoria apartment said they found an Arabic-language prayer asking God to protect bin Laden, audio files of lectures delivered by the al-Qaida leader and lists of Web sites such as "Jihad arena." Naji al-Marri said he doesn't believe his brother, a devout Muslim, traveled to Afghanistan, only to neighboring Pakistan, where he worked to help orphans and other poor people.
Ali al-Marri followed his brother to Bradley in Peoria in 1987, graduating four years later with a bachelor's degree in business management administration before returning to his native Qatar to work for a bank. He came back to Peoria for graduate school, arriving Sept. 10, 2001, with his wife and five kids. He was arrested that December.
Naji al-Marri has applied for a U.S. visa to attend his brother's trial. But he said he's nervous about coming back to the United States because he no longer trusts the government. He said he wonders why federal officials would have held his brother without trial for so long if they had legitimate evidence to convict him. "The (military) came and took him, and they put him there, and they forget about him," Naji al-Marri said as the evening call to prayer wailed from a nearby mosque. "It's like luggage — they put him some place and forget about him; nobody allowed to talk to him, nobody allowed to speak to him. He's a human being."