By James Vicini
Washington - An American Bar Association task force has criticised the Bush administration's treatment of "enemy combatants" in the war against terrorism, calling on Friday for safeguards to protect the innocent and prevent possible abuses of power.
In a report released at the annual meeting of the nation's largest lawyer association, the task force disagreed with American citizens being detained indefinitely without charges, without judicial review and without an attorney.
"The administration has not yet attempted to explain what procedures it believes should be required to assure that detentions are consistent with due process, American tradition and international law," said the 34-page report.
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'Possible abuses of power' "It cannot be sufficient for a president to claim that the (government) can detain whomever it wants, whenever it wants, for as long as it wants, as long as the detention bears some relationship to a terrorist act once committed by somebody against the United States," it said.
After the September 11 hijacked plane attacks the administration adopted a number of tactics that upset civil libertarians, including the detention at US military bases of Americans declared "enemy combatants".
The two cases involve Yaser Esam Hamdi, a US-born Taliban prisoner who was captured in Afghanistan and is being held in Virginia, and Jose Padilla, who was arrested in Chicago and accused of plotting a radioactive "dirty bomb" attack on the United States. He is being held in South Carolina.
The six-member group - which includes defence attorneys, former government lawyers and a law professor - said there was danger of government overreaction and undue trespassing on individual rights.
"While we must have the means to prevent more attacks like those of September 11, we must also insure that there are sufficient safeguards to protect the innocent and prevent possible abuses of power," the report said.
'We must get this right'
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