US: In a set back for the Bush administration's treatment of terror suspects, a US federal appeals court yesterday ruled that the Pentagon does not have the power to detain American citizen Mr Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant.
The court directed Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld to release Mr Padilla from military custody within 30 days or transfer him to civil jurisdiction to face trial. Mr Padilla has been held on a naval brig in South Carolina without charge or access to lawyers or family since his arrest in Chicago in May 2002 on suspicion of being involved in a "dirty bomb" plot.
Reacting to the decision White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan said: "We believe the Second Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed. The president has directed the Justice Department to seek a stay and further judicial review."
A three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled 2-1 that Mr Padilla's detention was not authorised by Congress and that President Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without such authorisation.
"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Centre stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaeda poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," the court said.
"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the President is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress."
The government said Mr Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, had proposed the bomb plot, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, to Abu Zubaydah, a top al-Qaeda official, but has brought no formal charges. The last time US citizens were interned without trial was during the Korean War but the court said the US was not a zone of combat.
The case has been highlighted by the American Civil Liberties Union which launched a campaign to challenge government anti-terror policies that the group deems undemocratic. Referring to the Padilla case, Mr Anthony Romero, of the ACLU said, "This is an administration which has unilaterally assumed the power to arrest and detain an American citizen on American soil, not charge this person with a crime, and insist in federal court papers that that American citizen on American soil does not have the right to confer with his counsel."