[JURIST] A lawyer for a US citizen held as an enemy combatant [JURIST report] argued Tuesday in front of a US appeals court that his client should not be held without charges. Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive], a Muslim convert, was arrested at O'Hare Airport in 2002 for planning to detonate a bomb in the US that was laced with radioactive materials, known as a "dirty bomb" [NRC fact sheet]. President Bush designated him an enemy combatant [Wikipedia backgrounder] after learning he was at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. The US Supreme Court refused to hear Padilla's challenge [JURIST report] to his enemy combatant status this June. Padilla is one of two US citizens to have been held as enemy combatants (the other, Yaser Hamdi, was released last year and went to Saudi Arabia, where he also holds citizenship). AP has more. In response, US Solicitor General Paul Clement argued that the President was within his authority to hold Padilla without any kind of special authorization from Congtress as America was a "battlefield" in the war on terror. The Washington Post has more on the government's arguments.