Pacific Views

Court orders US government to release 'enemy combatant.'

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of appeals has ordered the US government to release Jose Padilla, a US citizen who has been held since May 2002 on accusations that he plotted to explode a 'dirty bomb.'

The judges said that Dubya needed Congressional authorization to designate Padilla — or anyone else seized on US soil — as an enemy combatant. Since the White House had no such authorization, the designation was illegal. The court's ruling does not affect any US citizens captured in a combat zone in Afghanistan, however.

Dubya's administration has not yet indicated whether it will appeal the ruling.

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida 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," it added.

Via Washington Post.