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Gold9472
09-27-2006, 09:02 AM
More could be deemed enemy combatants by U.S. bill

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1429012006

By Vicki Allen
9/27/2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States could detain more foreigners as enemy combatants under legislation Congress will debate this week after a last-minute change in the bill, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

Democrats complained that Republicans quietly made several changes to the bill defining procedures for trying foreign terrorism suspects after an agreement last week between the White House and a group of dissident Republican senators.

"There are significant changes," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. He said the new elements could complicate efforts to push the bill through Congress before lawmakers leave this weekend to campaign for November elections.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key negotiator on the bill, said enemy combatants would now include those who provided money, weapons and other support for terrorist groups as well as those involved in actual operations.

Graham of South Carolina said the term "enemy combatant" also would apply to those fighting a U.S. ally.

"We're making sure that an enemy combatant could be defined as something other than a front-line troop," Graham said. "We want to make sure that giving material aid and support to terrorism would put you in the enemy combatant category."

Graham said U.S. citizens could not be deemed enemy combatants under the bill, but several human rights advocates said the language was so broad that they believed Americans could be detained under it. The Centre for Constitutional Rights said even attorneys representing Guantanamo inmates could be deemed enemy combatants.

The Bush administration has declared the detainees held at the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, most of whom were picked up in Afghanistan, to be enemy combatants who can be detained indefinitely.

The bill to set up trial procedures for terrorism suspects -- which Bush needs after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his original plan -- is slated to go to the House of Representatives floor on Wednesday.

In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans still were wrangling over possible amendments, and final action could be put off to later in the week.

Senate Democrats and the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, were trying to restore habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo inmates to challenge their detention. The bill would strip those rights, which Specter said was unconstitutional.

Specter also filed a compromise amendment to limit detainees to one habeas corpus application.

Levin, who also is pushing to restore habeas corpus rights, said he opposed the new definition of enemy combatants. "You can identify anyone anywhere as an enemy combatant, and their rights would be severely restricted whether or not you captured them on a battlefield," he said.

"We want those who would threaten the United States to be held and detained as long as they are a threat to the United States. But we believe in fundamental fairness too," said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee had told Democrats that only technical changes had been made to the bill. His Democratic counterpart, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, said Democrats would not try to hold up the bill, but were demanding a chance to offer amendments.