by TChris

Abu Ali, a 23-year-old American citizen, has been held in Saudi Arabia for 18 months on suspicion of terrorist activities. No charges have been filed.

Federal courts are generally powerless to force the release of a prisoner held by a foreign sovereign, but Ali persuaded U.S. District Judge John Bates to ask whether the United States played a role in Ali's detention.

[Judge Bates] ordered the Justice Department to produce documents establishing what role, if any, U.S. officials played in the arrest of Ahmed Abu Ali of Falls Church, Va. He was taken into custody in June 2003 in Medina, Saudi Arabia, while taking a final exam at his university.

Ali has been interrogated repeatedly by the FBI, suggesting that the United States may have de facto control over Ali's custody. Predictably, the Justice Department argued that Ali is beyond the jurisdiction of an American court, but Judge Bates isn't ready to buy that argument. The Department didn't refute the allegation that the United States controls Ali's continuing imprisonment. Recognizing that American involvement is plausible, Judge Bates concluded that the constitutional issues at stake deserved further investigation.

"There is no principle more sacred to the jurisprudence of our country or more essential to the liberty of its citizens," he wrote, "than the right to be free from arbitrary and indefinite detention at the whim of the executive. ... The court concludes that a citizen cannot be so easily separated from his constitutional rights[.]"