USA

Bayarea: Courts set limits on terror detention

WASHINGTON - Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and New York handed the Bush administration's war on terrorism two stunning legal setbacks Thursday, ruling that the government does not have unchecked power to jail ``enemy combatants'' without access to the courts.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that President Bush has no authority to hold American citizen Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant without congressional approval, and ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release the alleged ``dirty bomb'' plotter from military custody within 30 days.

In San Francisco, a federal appeals panel said the government cannot keep 660 foreign fighters captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan locked up indefinitely at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.