David Stout
New York Times
Feb. 21, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will review the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen being held in a Navy brig as an enemy combatant, thus setting the stage for a historic debate on the balance between individual liberties and national security.
The justices will hear the Padilla case in April, when they will also hear the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, another American citizen being held in a brig without charges as an enemy combatant.
Still another case scheduled to be argued before the court in April concerns nearly 700 foreigners being detained as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The justices are expected to rule on all three cases before their summer recess. Collectively, the rulings are likely to be of profound importance, drawing lines between the powers of courts and the administration and, perhaps, affecting the civil liberties of Americans in ways not yet imagined.
"I think the stakes are very high," Andrew Patel, one of Padilla's lawyers, said Friday. "Because the president said, 'I think you're a bad man,' he's been in jail for two years. He hasn't had a chance to defend himself. That's not the way we do things in this country, when we're at war or when we're at peace."
Lawyers for Padilla and Hamdi have contended that their treatment is unconstitutional.
President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and lawyers for the Bush administration have argued that Padilla and Hamdi are being treated fairly, essentially like prisoners of war, and that detaining them is appropriate and essential in the new kind of conflict the United States has been fighting since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson has argued that Padilla represents a "continuing, present and grave danger" to national security and that Hamdi is a "classic battlefield detainee."
Although the cases of Padilla, Hamdi and the Guantanamo detainees all revolve around the anti-terrorism measures instituted by the government after Sept. 11, they have significant differences.
The treatment of the Guantanamo detainees, captured during the American military operation in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban in fall 2001, has brought international criticism upon the United States. The District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals unequivocally supported the Bush administration's position that the Guantanamo detention camp was beyond the reach of American law.
But in December, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a contrary ruling. It declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning the foreigners without access to U.S. legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.
The Hamdi and Padilla cases, although both involving American citizens, differ markedly in one respect. Hamdi, an American citizen of Saudi descent, was captured while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002 after returning to the United States from travels in the Middle East and Pakistan. The American authorities said Padilla, a convert to Islam, had planned to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of an al-Qaida operation.
In December, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York dealt a setback to the administration, ruling in the Padilla case that Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a U.S. citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."
Although Congress has the power to authorize the detention of an American, the president, acting on his own, does not, the appeals court ruled.