Hear Padilla case.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted the Bush administration's request to transfer Jose Padilla from a U.S. Navy brig to Justice Department custody, where he can be taken before a federal judge for indictment on terrorism charges.

In one sense, the move is appropriate and long overdue. Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in 2002 and accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb," has sought for more than three years to go before a civilian court and challenge his detention. Now, he will have an opportunity to exercise that constitutional right.

Yet in another sense, the court's move is disturbing. The administration's motive in requesting a change in Padilla's status is obvious: It hopes to avoid Supreme Court review of an earlier Padilla challenge of the government's right to hold him, a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, indefinitely as an "enemy combatant."

The court must not allow this cynical ploy to succeed. While it has ordered Padilla transferred to civilian custody, the court should still hear his challenge and clarify the limits of executive authority that Bush so far has chosen to ignore in prosecuting the war on terror.

When Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the suspect had been plotting with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States (Justice officials later claimed Padilla's mission was to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas).

President Bush ordered Padilla held as an enemy combatant. He remained in a military brig, for much of the time without access to an attorney. Then last month, the Justice Department asked the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to transfer Padilla to civilian custody so he could face criminal charges unrelated to either the much-publicized "dirty bomb" plot or the plan to blow up apartment buildings.

The 4th Circuit, which had earlier upheld the president's detention authority, refused, saying it appeared the government was trying to avoid Supreme Court review of Padilla's challenge to his enemy combatant status.

Now that the Supreme Court has approved Padilla's transfer, it should grant Padilla's petition for review. Even though he has finally been transferred from military to civilian custody, his case remains of utmost importance to Americans who, no matter what crimes they may have committed, should be confident that their constitutional rights cannot be revoked at the whim of a president.

The Padilla case also demonstrates how the Bush administration has failed to establish a coherent and constitutional legal strategy in its war against terror. Justice officials initially cited the "dirty bomber" suspect as a prime example of why the president needed authority to detain citizens as enemy combatants. Yet Padilla has now become an even more important example of why the government must not be allowed to bypass the checks and balances of this country's judicial system and to run roughshod over Americans' fundamental rights.