:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 2.28.2005 ::

:: "Judge Says US Terror Suspect Can't Be Held as an Enemy Combatant" ::

From The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON - A federal district judge in South Carolina ruled Monday that President Bush had greatly overstepped his authority by detaining an American citizen as an enemy combatant for nearly three years without filing criminal charges.

The judge, Henry F. Floyd, ruled that the government must release the American, Jose Padilla, within 45 days from the military brig in Charleston, S.C., where he has been held since June 2002. That left the Bush administration time to appeal, and a Justice Department spokesman, John Nowacki, said officials immediately decided to do so.

In his opinion, Judge Floyd sharply criticized the administration's use of the enemy combatant designation in Mr. Padilla's case.

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant," Judge Floyd wrote.

The judge said he had no choice but to reject the president's claim that he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and was later accused of having planned to detonate a radiation-spewing "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of a plot by Al Qaeda.

"To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition," Judge Floyd wrote, "but it would also be a betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:38:00 PM [+] ::
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