A federal appeals court established a legal precedent Monday that U.S. citizens overseas can face searches without a warrant, ruling that three Osama bin Laden followers convicted in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies received fair trials.
"There is nothing in our history or our precedents suggesting that U.S. officials must first obtain a warrant before conducting an overseas search," the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
The three-judge panel added, however, that the searches must meet the Fourth Amendment's requirement of reasonableness, saying an individual's expectation of privacy must be weighed against the government's need for certain information.
Defendant Wadih El-Hage of Arlington, Texas, had argued that his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures was violated when U.S. authorities searched his home in Nairobi, Kenya, and tapped his telephone lines without a warrant.
The appeals court responded that the searches' intrusion on El-Hage's "privacy was outweighed by the government's manifest need to monitor his activities as an operative of al-Qaida because of the extreme threat al-Qaida presented, and continues to present, to national security."
El-Hage, 48, was convicted in 2001 with three others in the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and prompted President Bill Clinton to launch cruise missiles on bin Laden's Afghan camps two weeks later.
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