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Thursday, November 29, 2001 - Web posted at 7:29:55 am GMT

WASHINGTON - The US administration has come under fire from individual rights advocates over a series of measures it adopted granting authorities wider powers to combat terrorism.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been summoned to explain the measures to the Senate's Judiciary Committee in the first week of December.

"I want to know how those new steps that are going to be taken will protect us from terrorism," Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who heads the committee, told CNN on Tuesday.

Leahy pointed out that lawmakers adopted the anti-terrorist law Ashcroft had pushed, but that the recent decisions triggered unease over respect of constitutional rights.

"It is bothering a great number of people, Republicans and Democrats. I think the attorney general owes the country - certainly owes the Congress - an explanation," Leahy told Fox television Sunday.

Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the latest moves demonstrate "the government's increasing willingness to circumvent the requirements of the Bill of Rights".

Among the measures, a November 13 presidential decree allows for the establishment of special military tribunals to try foreigners suspected of committing terrorist acts.

A bipartisan group of 39 lawmakers have asked Bush in a letter to reconsider.

"We oppose the creation of military tribunals under your executive order, which would permit secret arrests, secret charges using secret evidence, secret prosecutions ... secret trials, secret convictions and even secret executions," the letter said.

Criticism has also been raised against the Justice Department's decision to tap the telephones of lawyers of certain people detained in connection with the Sept 11 attacks and who are suspected of inciting terrorism from their prison cells.

Ashcroft has played down the issue, saying only a dozen detainees were affected.

"Curtailing civil liberties: this is a pretty extreme group which is leading the country, the Taliban wing of the Republican Party," American University historian Peter Kuznick said.

There have also been protests over the detention of an unknown number of suspects after the Sept 11 attacks in conditions that were never described by authorities. No charges have been announced to date.

"Bush and Ashcroft are taking advantage of the situation created by September 11," said constitutional rights expert Emilio Viano.

The New York Times said that in addition, a measure that has not been published in the Federal Register allows federal authorities to keep foreigners in detention and expel them, even if a judge suggests otherwise.- Nampa-AFP

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