Lawyers fear for Marri's sanity

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is obsessed with the noise variations in an industrial fan, the buzzing of fluorescent lights overhead and the preparation of his dinners. He has stuffed his air vents with food to prevent what he believes are noxious fumes from streaming into his cell, and he worries at times that his lawyers are part of a government conspiracy against him. . . .

Marri's captivity in an often-forgotten part of the U.S. military detention system, outside the established legal process at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, raises the legal question of whether the United States can hold him without trial under those conditions until the end of the "war on terror," as the government has argued in court.