Two influential US courts dealt a double blow to the Bush administration's anti-terror policies last night by ruling the government was violating the civil rights of "enemy combatants" held in a South Carolina navy prison and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The findings by the powerful federal appeals courts in New York and San Francisco were the strongest legal rebuke to date of the administration's controversial policy of holding some suspects indefinitely without criminal charges and at the same time depriving them of access to lawyers.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City ruled that President George W. Bush does not have the power to detain an American citizen seized on US soil as an enemy combatant.
In a 2-1 ruling on the case of New Yorker Mr Jose Padilla, it said only the US Congress can authorise such detentions and it ordered the government to release him from military custody within 30 days.
Mr Padilla has been in custody in the United States for 19 months as a suspect in an alleged al-Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb."
In the other case, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the United States cannot imprison "enemy combatants" indefinitely at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In a 2-1 decision, the court said that such indefinite imprisonment was inconsistent with American law and raised serious concerns under international law. It also said that the more than 600 detainees should have access to lawyers.
"Even in times of national emergency - indeed, particularly in such times - it is the obligation of the Judicial Branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the Executive Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike," the Ninth Circuit panel said.
The ruling said the United States had held the detainees for nearly two years following the undeclared war against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in response to the September 11th 2001 attacks on the United States.
"The United States has subjected over six hundred of these captives to indefinite detention, yet has failed to afford them any means to challenge their confinement, to object to the failure to recognise them as prisoners of war, to consult with legal counsel, or even to advance claims of mistaken capture or identity," it said.