WASHINGTON: More than a year after the administration detained two US citizens without charges, a growing number of groups reflecting a broad spectrum of views believe that constitutional rights here are increasingly threatened by the so-called ‘war on terrorism’.

Soon after their arrests, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla were both declared enemy combatants by President George W. Bush and detained by the military — without a chance to see lawyers or face charges.

“Never in our history has the president asserted the authority to arrest and detain somebody indefinitely and without any due process. We think there is no basis for this in domestic or international law,” says Joseph Onek from the Constitution Project, a non-profit bipartisan group based at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.

“The danger is that this administration or future administrations could simply arrest people without any charges indefinitely,” he added in an interview.

“Civil liberties in the post 9/11 environment cannot be inviolable. But when the government proposes to violate traditionally protected rights it must at a minimum satisfy two criteria,” adds Robert A. Levy.

“First, the government has to convince us that there is a compelling need to do what it’s going to do. Second, the government has to demonstrate that what it proposes will be effective and that there is no less intrusive means of accomplishing the same goals.”

“And we do not believe that the government has met this burden. Certainly not in the Padilla case,” added the senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, a non- partisan public policy research foundation.

FBI officials arrested Padilla at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in May last year after he arrived from Pakistan.

He was held as a material witness in a plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” before Bush declared him to be an “enemy combatant” the day after his arrest.

Since then, Padilla has been held in solitary confinement in a military brig in South Carolina.

The Cato Institute, Constitution Project, and four other groups filed a friend-of-the-court or “amicus curiae” brief in federal appeals court last week in which they argued that the administration has no legal authority to detain a US citizen indefinitely without charge, and that the act violates the constitution.

“No congressional action justifies the lawless seizure and incommunicado detention of Mr Padilla by the executive,” argues the brief. “To the contrary, the executive action runs brazenly afoul of the constitutional principles of separation of powers and the statutory law that safeguards that principle.”

According to Levy, “the central issue involved is separation of powers. We don’t contend that the justice department has to give every combatant an attorney and a full hearing in federal courts.

“But we do contend that the executive branch unilaterally cannot arrest a US citizen on US soil, detain him in a military brig without any charges, without access to an attorney and without any ability to argue in his own defence.”

“That’s why we joined together. We felt that a cross section of ideological views from left to right might convince the court that this issue is of broad relevance to all Americans of all political persuasions,” he added.

“American citizens have a right to a lawyer and the right to be charged with a crime,” John Whitehead, president and founder of the Rutherford Institute, a non-profit civil liberties group, told IPS on Tuesday.

“So far that hasn’t happened (in the Padilla case) because the president — much like the old kings in Europe — just made up the law. What we see the Bush administration doing is overriding our constitution. I think it’s tyranny.”

“There is a specific act passed by our Congress which says that this kind of action can be taken but there has to be a specific congressional law authorising this. In this case, there is no specific law authorizing this. Not only is the administration overriding the Constitution but also Congress,” he continued.

“There is no law at this point, if someone is brought to a detention camp, much like the Nazis did in World War II with the Gestapo.”

Besides Padilla, Yaser Esam Hamdi — also a US citizen — was declared an enemy combatant. But in contrast to Padilla, Hamdi was not detained on US soil but captured in Afghanistan.

As these cases unfold, public interest groups question the balance between the ‘war on terror’ and the protection of civil liberties.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.