Tough moves worry civil libertarians

WASHINGTON - The United States Congress will today start considering controversial new legislation that would give the US authorities the right to lock up foreigners considered to be terrorist suspects and have them deported without presenting any evidence or proof.

Under the proposals drawn up the Justice Department following last week's attacks in New York and Washington, the only chance for an appeal against such an extradition would be at the point of removal from the country.

With immense pressure on both the Bush Administration and Congress to "do something", civil liberty groups fear the Government could be responding to the tragedy with legislation that infringes constitutional rights.

The Government has asked Congress to let prosecutors use information collected by foreign governments in ways that are unconstitutional in the US.

It also wants to let the FBI and other police agencies seize billing information like credit card numbers from internet companies without a court order, according to a Justice Department analysis of the anti-terrorism legislative package it plans to submit on Saturday New Zealand time.

Attorney-General John Ashcroft's legislation would allow the use of electronic surveillance gathered by foreign governments with methods that violate the US Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure in American courts against American citizens.

Ashcroft said this week he had created an anti-terrorism task force with representatives from every US attorney's office in the country. He has also revised internal rules allowing the Immigration and Naturalisation Service to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours, instead of one day, before deciding whether to charge them. INS rules already allow any person who does not have legal permission to be in the US to be detained for an unlimited time in "extraordinary circumstances," which Justice officials said would apply to the terrorism investigation.

Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Washington Post that the proposed deportation rules were more severe than legislation passed in 1996 allowing expanded use of "secret evidence" that did not have to be shown to the suspect.

Mike Maggio, an immigration lawyer, added: "This proposed legislation is basically making a doormat of the Constitution. It would permit the INS to serve as prosecutor, judge and jury with no judicial review."

Meanwhile, the European Union is rethinking its refusal to send accused terrorists to face trial in the US. Justice and Home Affairs Ministers from all 15 member states will today debate the issue as well as other ways of boosting the fight against terrorism, money-laundering and cyber-crime.

Officials believe that there could be an agreement on extradition from the EU of terror suspects, providing the US judicial authorities give assurances that capital punishment will not be applied in these cases.

The EU will be hoping to reassure America of its support for its "war against terrorism" at the summit yet also ease fears at home and in the Muslim world that the West may be about to plunge into a mad military adventure.

European leaders have warned that the response to the terror attacks must be smart, cool-headed and focused. In the past week, Europe has been rattled by the rise in ill feeling towards its 14 million Muslims and at the surge in fundamentalist sentiment in fragile Muslim states such as Pakistan.

Opinion has also been dismayed at President George W. Bush's cowboy-style demand that terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden be handed over "dead or alive" - and his description of the anti-terrorist campaign as a "crusade," a term that rouses historic memories in the Muslim world of injustice and mass slaughter.

Analyst Dominique Moisi of the French Institute for International Relations said, "We are in the same boat, but we fear what the captain of the boat will decide to do. The sort of crusade that would create a 'clash of civilisations' war makes Europe really nervous."

Foreign Minister Louis Michel of Belgium, whose country holds the EU presidency, indicated his concern that Washington might simply ignore its allies, as has been the case several times this year, on issues ranging from the Kyoto Protocol to the planned US anti-missile defence.

An EU source described the anti-terrorism measures as "revolutionary" and said they would apply not just to terrorism but to organised crime, money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and human beings and sex crimes against women and children.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT, INDEPENDENT

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