Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (Arabic: علي صالح كحلة المري ) (b. 1966–1967) is a citizen of Qatar who was sentenced to serve an 8-year sentence in a United States federal prison. He pleaded guilty to one count in a plea bargain after his case was transferred in 2009 to the federal court system. Al-Marri was a graduate student at Bradley University and a legal resident of the United States when arrested in December 2001 in Illinois by the federal government. Two years after his arrest, he was indicted on charges of credit card fraud, but in 2003, he was classified as an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody. He was detained for six years at the Naval Consolidated Brig at Charleston, South Carolina, in solitary confinement. He is the only non-citizen known to have been held as an enemy combatant within the continental United States since the September 11 attacks. In Al-Marri v. Wright (2008), the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that, as a legal resident arrested in the United States, he was entitled to contest his detention in federal court. It ruled that he needed to be charged and tried, or released. The Supreme Court agreed to certiorari. After a change in administrations, in 2009, the government transferred al-Marri's case to the Department of Justice and the federal civilian court system, making it moot at the Supreme Court. In a plea agreement, al-Marri pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization on April 30, 2009. Early life and education Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri was born in Qatar in 1966 or 1967, as estimated by the United States government. He came to the United States to go to graduate school and was a legal resident. He attended Bradley University, a small private college in Peoria, Illinois. Before coming to the United States, Al Marri is believed to have worked for nearly a decade as a "key person" in the audit department of Qatar Islamic Bank and then as a senior auditor for the government of Qatar. Arrest The Peoria Journal Star reports that al-Marri's initial arrest in December 2001 was at a routine traffic stop in Peoria, Illinois. He was held by federal authorities in civilian jails in Peoria and New York City as a material witness. FBI agent Ali Soufan's questioning of Mohammed al Qahtani led to the terrorism