Carter faults US on rights

"This is a violation of the basic character of my country, and it's very disturbing to me," Carter said.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether foreigners held at the Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts. The Bush administration has cited laws from the World War II era stating that foreign prisoners detained in wartime have no such right.

The conference, which began yesterday at the Carter Center, attracted more than 40 human rights activists from across the world, including United Nations acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertran Ramcharan. Attendees planned to craft a document calling for renewed attention to human rights as nations draft antiterrorism laws.

Saad Ibrahim, a professor at American University in Cairo who was jailed for seven years after exposing fraud in the Egyptian election process, said the United States' actions cast a long shadow. "Every dictator in the world is using what the United States has done under the Patriot Act . . . to justify their past violations of human rights and to declare a license to continue to violate human rights."

The Bush administration's Patriot Act expanded government's surveillance and detention power.