The president should have broad and "robust" authority to imprison enemies in wartime, even if it means locking up American citizens away from the battlefield, the Bush administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The Justice Department urged the court to overturn an appellate ruling last year that found that US President George W. Bush had exceeded his constitutional authority in detaining Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the government contends has links to al-Qaeda.
Padilla's case is one of three the Supreme Court will hear next month on the sweeping powers the administration has assumed to fight terrorism.
Padilla was arrested in May, 2002. He has not been formally charged, but American officials accuse him of aiding al-Qaeda associates and planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the US. Bush declared Padilla an enemy combatant in June, 2002, and he has been held largely incommunicado in a South Carolina military prison since then.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, in Manhattan, ruled in December that Bush had no inherent authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants off the battlefield.
The administration told the Supreme Court that the president should be given great latitude in a time of war and terrorist attacks.
"Al-Qaeda combatants assimilate into the civilian population and plot to launch large-scale attacks against civilian targets far from any traditional battlefield," said the brief filed by Solicitor General Theodore Olson. "Confining the president's authority to traditional combat zones thus would substantially impair the ability of the commander in chief to engage and defeat the enemy forces."
Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, plans to file her brief next month.
"The ultimate issue," Newman said, "is whether the president has the authority to order the military to detain a US citizen captured on US soil."
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