WASHINGTON, July 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As Washington's undeclared war on terrorism engulfs U.S. citizens suspected of fighting for the enemy, the nation's courts struggle to protect the dwindling Constitutional rights of its citizens, specifically those of Muslim faith and/or Arab descent as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. is being widely criticized by human rights and civil rights organizations, as well as the international community for denying its Muslim and Middle Eastern citizens their rights under the auspices of national security during the “war on terror.”

This week, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh's lawyers will try to convince a judge to suppress statements he made to interrogators before he was formally arrested on charges of conspiring to murder U.S. nationals, aiding terrorism and using a firearm in a violent crime, news agencies reported.

Lindh, 21, is scheduled to stand trial August 26 in Alexandria, Virginia. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Meanwhile, another U.S. federal judge in New York is considering whether to allow a lawyer for Abdullah al-Muhajir to petition for release. Al-Muhajir, born Jose Padilla, a 31-year-old former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam in prison, has been held as an enemy combatant since June 9, when authorities accused him of planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.

He, like almost all other Muslims and/or Arabs detained by the U.S, has not been charged with a crime. Only one man of the roughly 2,000 people, mostly Arab men, has thus far been charged with any crime related to September 11.

A U.S. appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, ruled Friday in a similar case that Yasser Esam Hamdi did not have the right to meet with a lawyer, reversing a lower court's decision and violating his constitutionally guaranteed right to due process.

Hamdi, 21 - who also has not been charged with a crime - was captured with Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters after a prison uprising in November in Afghanistan and taken to the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In April, he was transferred to the brig at the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, after authorities discovered that he was born to Saudi parents in the southern U.S. State of Louisiana.

In all three cases, U.S. authorities argue the captives were properly treated as enemy soldiers and are not entitled to the rights given criminal suspects in peacetime.

However, the U.S.’ treatment of non-citizens captured in Afghanistan has come under harsh criticism. The international community, including London-based human rights giant Amnesty International and American-based Human Rights Watch, has slammed the U.S. for not adhering to the Geneva Conventions relating to the classification of enemy fighters to be regarded as “prisoners of war” upon capture.

The U.S. has refused to grant the Taliban, Al-Qa’eda and Arab detainees the title of “prisoners of war”, thus allowing the U.S. government to refrain from treating them according to the Geneva Conventions.

"There are different frames of protections afforded by our Constitution that do not extend to the way our government would deal with persons on a battlefield," Attorney General John Ashcroft recently told members of a House of Representatives committee on homeland security, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

International conventions govern the treatment of captured soldiers, and allow those accused of war crimes to be tried by their captors. But U.S. laws are vague on how to deal with citizens who aid a loosely defined militant group that transcends national boundaries.

"In many respects, we really are breaking new ground here," said Michael O'Neill, a specialist in criminal law at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, and a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

During the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865, civilians accused of helping the Confederate rebels were tried before military commissions and in some cases sentenced to death. President Abraham Lincoln also suspended the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of habeas corpus, effectively denying some people their right to a speedy trial.

More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1942 upheld President Franklin Roosevelt's right to try seven captured German saboteurs - including one who was a U.S. citizen - before a military tribunal. Six were later executed.

Like Roosevelt, President George W. Bush has authorized military tribunals to try accused terrorists who are not U.S. citizens. But all the cases so far have been brought in civilian court, including that of Frenchman Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiring in the September 11 attacks - which killed some 3,000 people.

Critics charge that the administration's approach threatens the rights of all Americans, especially given the fact that Bush has neither asked Congress to declare war nor request lawmakers' approval for his decrees.

They also point out that Moussaoui, because he is being tried in a civilian court and was not captured on the battlefield, is accorded more legal protections than U.S. citizens Lindh, al-Muhajir and Hamdi.

"Without either constitutional or statutory authority, the administration has decided that it will set the rules, prosecute infractions, determine guilt or innocence, then review the results of its own actions. That's too much unchecked power in the hands of the executive branch," said Robert Levy, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute think-tank in Washington D.C.

While courts are more likely in times of war to defer to the executive branch, the possibility exists that the three existing cases will produce differing rulings, forcing the Supreme Court to resolve the issue.

Ultimately, however, Congress should get involved and draw clear guidelines for dealing with U.S. citizens involved in terrorism, O'Neill said.

"What I hope frankly is that when some of the dust settles that Congress will get engaged," he said.