Court rulings double blow to Bush terror strategy

US FEDERAL courts dealt a double blow to the Bush administration’s strategy in the war on terror yesterday, ruling that the US military cannot deny prisoners access to lawyers or the American courts by detaining them indefinitely.

One rulings favoured the 660 “enemy combatants” held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The other involved American citizen Jose Padilla, who was seized in Chicago in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” and declared as an enemy combatant.

In one case, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base should have access to lawyers and the American court system.