'Bush can hold terror suspect indefinitely'

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that President George W Bush has the power to keep a terrorist suspect jailed indefinitely, but that the detainee has the right to challenge his detention as an "enemy combatant."

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, took up the case of Ali Al-Marri, the only "war on terror" suspect arrested on US soil, and reversed a June 2007 decision by a lower court denying Bush the power to keep the suspect jailed indefinitely and ordering his release.

By a 5-4 decision, the Richmond court, reputedly one of the most conservative in the country, said: "if the government's allegations about Al-Marri are true, Congress has empowered the president to detain him as an enemy combatant."

At the same time, the court also decided by a 5-4 vote that "al-Marri has not been afforded sufficient process to challenge his designation as an enemy combatant."

The high court concluded that the Guantanamo naval base can be treated as US territory where rights enshrined in the US Constitution must be respected.

The US Justice Department welcomed the Richmond court's decision upholding Bush's power to jail terrorist suspects indefinitely. "We are pleased with the court's en banc decision today ... that authority is backed by the support of Congress and is a vital tool in protecting the nation against further terrorist attacks," it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose trial is set to open at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, claims he was abused and subjected to grim conditions there, US media reported Wednesday.

A federal judge was to decide Friday whether Hamdan's trial, the first since the US "war-on-terror" prison camp was opened in late 2001 at its naval base in Cuba, would go ahead on schedule. Meanwhile preliminary hearings were under way this week.

The New York Times reported that the Yemeni national, who has spent six years at the prison camp, said that on his transfer to Guantanamo his eyes were bandaged and his body restrained in a way that aggravated a back injury.

"Such severe pain, I cannot really explain," he was quoted as saying.

US media at the base said Salim Hamdan testified Tuesday how he was humiliated by a woman interrogator.

She "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers," The Washington Post reported.

"I said to her, 'What do you want?'". "She said 'I want you to answer all of my questions,'" the paper quoted him as saying.