(CBS) A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the government can hold U.S. citizens as enemy combatants during wartime without the constitutional protections afforded Americans in criminal prosecutions.

In overturning a lower court ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., said the status of 22-year-old Yaser Esam Hamdi as a citizen did not change the fact he was captured in Afghanistan while fighting alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

"Judicial review does not disappear during wartime, but the review of battlefield captures in overseas conflicts is a highly deferential one" to the government, the three-judge panel wrote.

This ruling is a sweeping victory for the government, says CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen.

"It's hard to imagine even Attorney General John Ashcroft drafting a decision that is more favorable to the administration than this one is," Cohen said. "On virtually every point, the federal appeals court sided with the government, and that's especially true when the court recognized severe restrictions on its own power to second-guess the executive branch."

In Washington, Ashcroft hailed the decision, calling it "an important victory for the president's ability to protect the American people in times of war."

"Detention of enemy combatants prevents them from rejoining the enemy and continuing to fight against America and its allies, and has long been upheld by our nation's courts, regardless of the citizenship of the enemy combatant," Ashcroft said in a statement.

Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after a prison uprising by suspected Taliban and al-Qaida members. He was transported along with hundreds of other alleged enemy soldiers to a prison at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It later was discovered Hamdi had been born in Louisiana to Saudi parents. Hamdi and his family returned to Saudi Arabia while he still was a toddler.

Hamdi has been held in a naval brig in Norfolk, Va., since April.

His case is seen by some as a major legal test case to determine the government's ability to hold citizens without access to a lawyer or the courts. If Hamdi can be imprisoned in a military jail with few of the constitutional protections afforded Americans facing criminal prosecution, critics say, then other U.S. citizens could be similarly held.

A federal judge in Norfolk, Va., agreed, ruling in August that Hamdi should at least have a right to a lawyer and a chance to see the government's evidence against him.

The circuit court agreed that the case raises serious questions about the rights of citizens but concluded that, in wartime, the government's authority is supreme in deciding who may be held indefinitely.

Hamdi, the judges said, was "squarely within the zone of active combat" when captured and is being lawfully detained. The courts, they added, have only limited authority to intervene in such national security matters.

"Any effort to ascertain the facts concerning the petitioner's conduct while amongst the nation's enemies would entail an unacceptable risk of obstructing war efforts authorized by Congress and undertaken by the executive branch," the 54-page opinion said.

Legal analyst Cohen said the ruling may not settle the matter.


"Now the question has to be whether the Supreme Court will be willing to get involved in this case and have the final word on this controversy, which clearly is one of the most important ones yet in the legal war on terror," Cohen said. "So this might not be over but it sure looks like Yasser Hamdi is going to stay on ice - incommunicado, in the brig and without charges against him - for the forseeable future."