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SL lawyer cited as authority in terror case
From Neville de Silva in London
A Sri Lankan lawyer is named as one of the authorities cited by the American Bar Association and other institutions in a high profile terrorism case in the US that has aroused worldwide interest.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse a Court of Appeal verdict in favour of Jose Padilla, a US citizen arrested its soil as an "enemy combatant" and held in detention in a US military facility.

Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama, a former professor of Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and of constitutional law and the International Law of Human Rights at the University of Hong Kong, is one of six authorities cited by those who prepared Padilla's defence brief before the US Supreme Court.

They have referred to Dr. Jayawickrama's 920-paged seminal work on the Judicial Application of Human Rights Law that deals with national, regional and international jurisprudence.

The Bush administration argued before the Supreme Court that the war on terrorism gives the government power to seize Americans and hold them in without charges indefinitely to ensure they are not a danger to the nation.
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