Alleged Sleeper Agent Pleads Guilty

After six years of being held without charges as an “enemy combatant,” Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri finally got his day in court. The accused sleeper agent pleaded guilty in a federal court in Illinois to supporting terrorism by conspiring to provide material resources to a terrorist organization. His indictment marks a shift from the Bush-era policy of indefinitely detaining suspected terrorists without charging them. Al-Marri has been in U.S. custody since he legally entered the country on Sept 10, 2001, and has been held in the U.S. Navy Brig in Charleston since 2003 under suspicion that he was plotting second-wave terror attacks. In a New Yorker story earlier this year he said he wanted "to be treated like every other person in the United States who is accused of a crime, including terrorism, and to be given a fair trial in an American court."