Court Opinion

ID: 9518394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:51:44.07373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:49.111052
License: Public Domain

DUNCAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree with the majority of my colleagues today that, if the Government’s allegations about al-Marri are true, Congress has empowered the President to detain him as an enemy combatant. However, with Hamdi as a guidepost, I am unable to conclude that the process afforded al-Marri thus far was insufficient. Indeed, the government’s evidence, in the form of the Rapp Declaration, was far more detailed than that proffered in Hamdi. Further, as noted by Chief Judge Williams and Judge Niemeyer, the magistrate judge and the district court in fact accommodated al-Marri’s only specific request-that the Rapp Declaration be substantially declassified to provide him with better notice of the factual basis for his detention. In the face of the Rapp Declaration’s specific and comprehensive allegations (which, as Chief Judge Williams and Judge Niemeyer point out, relate to matters uniquely within al-Mar-ri’s knowledge), it is al-Marri’s unilateral and absolute refusal to participate in the incremental process suggested by Hamdi that warrants affirmance. For that reason, with due respect for the varying views presented by my colleagues, I also *352concur in the separate opinion authored by Chief Judge Williams.