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POTUS Upheld
Bush's power to detain US enemy combatant upheld
September 9, 2005
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held in a South Carolina military brig for more than three years as a suspected enemy combatant without any charges, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the president of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda," wrote appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig for the three-judge panel.
"We conclude that the president does possess such authority," wrote Luttig, a conservative whom the Bush administration has been considering for a possible Supreme Court nomination.
The ruling by the court based in Richmond, Virginia, was a major victory for the Bush administration, but the decision can be appealed to the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam, initially was suspected by U.S. officials of plotting with al Qaeda to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after returning from Pakistan. Bush then declared him an enemy combatant, and Padilla was placed in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina -- where he remains.
The appeals court reversed a decision by a federal judge in South Carolina who ruled in February that Bush had no authority to have Padilla held as an enemy combatant. The judge said Padilla must be released if he is not charged with a crime.
Luttig said that Bush had the power to detain Padilla, based on the joint resolution authorizing military force that Congress approved after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
He also cited a Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 in a similar case involving American-born and Saudi-raised Yaser Hamdi, who also was held by the military in this country as an enemy combatant.
Luttig said the resolution applied even more clearly and unmistakably to Padilla than to Hamdi.
"Padilla, after all, in addition to supporting hostile forces in Afghanistan and taking up arms against our troops on a battlefield in that country like Hamdi, also came to the United States in order to commit future acts of terrorism against American citizens and targets," Luttig wrote.
"Because, like Hamdi, Padilla is an enemy combatant, and because his detention is no less necessary than was Hamdi's in order to prevent his return to the battlefield, the president is authorized by the (resolution) to detain Padilla as a fundamental incident to the conduct of war," he said.
U.S. officials last year backed off their claim that Padilla was plotting to set off a dirty bomb. They said Padilla had plotted with al Qaeda leaders to blow up apartment buildings by using natural gas. None of the plots was carried out.
Richard Samp, general counsel of the Washington Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group that had supported the Bush administration in the case, hailed the ruling.
"The courts are ill-equipped to second-guess the president when, acting in his capacity as commander in chief, he makes decisions implicating sensitive matters of foreign policy, national security, or military affairs," Samp said.
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