WASHINGTON, July 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A U.S. appeals court said Friday that a suspected U.S.-born Taliban captured in Afghanistan does not have the right to a lawyer, saying the government had the right to detain combatants in a time of war. 

"Allowing alleged combatants to call American commanders to account in federal courtrooms would stand the war-making powers [of the government] on their heads," federal Judge Harvie Wilkerson wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. 

A U.S. district court judge in Virginia ruled June 11 that Yaser Esam Foudad Hamdi would be allowed to see a lawyer over U.S. government objections that as an "unlawful enemy combatant" he had no rights to an attorney, but the three-judge panel found that the lower court judge lacked jurisdiction. 

"In the face of ongoing hostilities, the district court issued an order that failed to address the many serious questions raised by Hamdi's case," Wilkinson wrote, reports news agencies. 

Prosecutors argued that Hamdi might pass secret messages through his attorneys and that his detention is needed for national security and to allow the government to gather intelligence from the war on terrorism from him, reports news agencies.

"The June 11 order does not consider what effect petitioners unmonitored access to counsel might have upon the government's ongoing gathering of intelligence. The order does not ask to what extent federal courts are permitted to review military judgments of combatant status," wrote Wilkerson in his ruling. 

The appeals court, however, did not dismiss outright the petition that Hamdi should have access to representation in court, deeming that "any dismissal of the petition at this point would be as premature as the district court's June 11 order," and the case should be remanded. 

"In dismissing," the judges decided, "we ourselves would be summarily embracing a sweeping proposition ... namely that, with no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely, without charge, on the government's say-so," reports CNN. 

Hamdi, 21, 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.