Bush ‘overstepped authority’ in detaining US citizens

PRESIDENT George W Bush has overstepped his authority since the September 11 attacks by jailing American citizens suspected of links to terrorism and denying them access to lawyers and courts, an attorney for a US-born terrorism suspect told the Supreme Court yesterday.

“Never before in history has this court granted the president a blank cheque to do whatever he wants to American citizens,” lawyer Jennifer Martinez argued on behalf of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and alleged al-Qaida associate.

Government lawyer Paul Clement countered that Congress gave the president broad powers to go after terrorists and head off future threats at home or abroad.

He likened Padilla to a “latter-day, citizen version of Mohammed Atta”, the suspected ringleader of the September 11 hijackings, who died in the 2001 attacks.

The justices heard back-to-back cases about the detentions of Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, the US-born son of a Saudi oil industry worker seized during fighting in Afghanistan more than two years ago.

“We could have people locked up all over the country tomorrow, with no opportunity to be heard ... Congress didn’t intend for widespread, indefinite detentions,” Hamdi's lawyer Frank Dunham told Justice Sandra O’Connor, who wondered if the president was granted detention power when Congress approved the use of military force shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Nowhere does the (statute) have ‘detention’ in it,” Mr Dunham said.

Clement, arguing for the Bush administration in both cases, argued that a president, as commander-in-chief, has wide latitude to detain suspected terrorists if they pose a national security risk.

Hamdi was born in Louisiana while his Saudi father worked there, but grew up in the Middle East. Padilla is a convert to Islam who was raised in Chicago.

Both are US citizens.

The government is holding Hamdi and Padilla in near isolation at a Navy brig in South Carolina. Until recently, neither had seen his lawyer or known that his case was before the Supreme Court.

Hamdi was captured weeks after the September 11 attacks. The government says he was fighting with Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Padilla was arrested two years ago in Chicago on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb.