Tormented justice.

The nation’s courts continue to grapple with abuses committed by the administration of President Bush in the name of fighting terror. On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that turns on the claim of Mr. Bush that he can order people living in the United States to be detained by the military indefinitely without charges. The case involves Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was living legally in the US. He was declared an enemy combatant in the mid of the year 2003 and since then, has been held in a Navy.

The detention was upheld by an appeals court panel, and it should be quickly and definitely reversed by the Supreme Court. This sort of intolerable reading of law would leave a president free to suspend anyone’s right, foreign nationals as well as American citizens.

Another equally notorious case, which involves Maher Arar, is being heard on Tuesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan. Maher arar, who is a Syrian-born Canadian without any ties to terrorism, became a victim of Bush team’s lawless policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’.

Mr. Arar’s nightmare began in 2002, when he was seized by federal agents as he tried to change planes on his way to Canada from a family vacation. After being held incommunicado in solitary confinement and subjected to harsh interrogation without any proper access to lawyer, he was rendered to Syria to be tortured. For almost a year, he was locked in a dank underground cell of the size of a grave before he was finally let go.

Later, the Canadian government declared that it had provided erroneous information about Mr. Arar to American authorities. In 2007, they apologized to him and agreed to pay him $10 million. But still, last June, a three-judge federal appeals panel dismissed Mr. Arar’s civil rights lawsuit on flimsy national security grounds, and his failure to seek court review of his rendition within the time period specified in immigration law. In essence, the two-to-one ruling rewarded the egregiously bad behavior of the administration in denying Arar’s initial requests to see a lawyer, and then lying to his attorney about his whereabouts.

And by treating this as an immigration case, the ruling certainly overlooked reality. However, it was an encouraging sign when the appellate court took the rare step of scheduling Tuesday’s rehearing before its entire bench before an appeal was filed.