US: In a major legal victory for the Bush administration, a US federal appeals court has ruled that in time of war the government can intern an American citizen captured in hostile action overseas, without trial or access to a lawyer.
The case concerns Yaser Esam Hamdi, a 22-year-old American-born Saudi who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan when his Taliban unit surrendered in November 2001, and is now being held incommunicado on a military brig in Norfolk, Virginia.
The decision upholds nearly unlimited power for President Bush to order the detention of any US citizens "captured in armed struggle" and hold them while the US-declared war on terrorism continues.
The ruling was made on Wednesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia, which dismissed a constitutional challenge waged on behalf of Mr Hamdi by lawyers appointed by his father, and refused to examine the reasons for holding him as inappropriate.
The decision is being interpreted as a victory for collective rights over individual rights in the US, and for the concerns of security over the rights of citizens, a point made clear by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, the Reagan-appointed justice heading the three-judge panel of the court.
"For the judicial branch to trespass upon the exercise of the warmaking powers would be an infringement of the right to self-determination and self-governance at a time when the care of the common defence is most critical," he said.
The ruling stated: "One who takes up arms against the United States in a foreign theatre of war, regardless of his citizenship, may properly be designated an enemy combatant and treated as such." Courts must be "highly deferential" to the government during wartime, it declared, even an unconventional war such as that against global terrorism.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft said the decision was an important victory "for the President's ability to protect the American people in times of war".
Human rights advocates said the decision was an abdication by the courts of their role in protecting US citizens' rights. Ms Elisa Massimino, head of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in Washington, called it a "we'll-look-the-other-way decision", which "undermines the system of checks and balances put in place in this country to ensure that power is not abused". Mr Hamdi's lawyers argued that as a US citizen he had the same constitutional rights as citizens in criminal cases, including the right to consult a lawyer and to question the reasons for his detention.
The Louisiana-born detainee was captured by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, allegedly in possession of an AK-47 rifle, and was later transported to Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, where his US citizenship was established. Mr Hamdi and his family left Louisiana for Saudi Arabia while he was a child but he never renounced US citizenship.
Some 600 non-US prisoners are being held at Guantanamo, also without charge or access to lawyers. A federal judge has upheld the administration's actions, at Guantanamo, on the grounds that US laws do not apply there.