COLUMBUS, Ohio, 10 June 2005 — President Bush yesterday credited the Patriot Act with helping to convict more than 200 terrorists and dismissed accusations that the law has violated civil liberties.

Bush described scary scenarios that he said were thwarted by law enforcement and intelligence officers working together with powers granted by the law he signed six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Bush used the examples to pressure Congress to make permanent the provisions of the law that would otherwise expire at the end of the year. But he faces oppositions from civil libertarians who tell their own stories of law-abiding citizens dogged by secret probing of their private affairs.

The Patriot Act bolstered FBI surveillance and law-enforcement powers in terror cases and increased use of material witness warrants to hold suspects incommunicado for months. Bush urged lawmakers to disregard what he called “unfair criticisms of this important good law.” He said the Patriot Act has been used to bring charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half have been convicted. He also said it has been used to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia and Florida.

“For the state of our national security, Congress must not rebuild a wall between law enforcement and intelligence,” he said to an audience that included roughly 100 uniformed state troopers at the Ohio Patrol Training Academy.

Bush spent just over an hour on the ground in Ohio, a destination chosen so he could highlight the capture and conviction of Iyman Faris. Faris was a Columbus truck driver who authorities said plotted attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge and a central Ohio shopping mall.

Faris acknowledged that he met Osama Bin Laden in 2000 at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and provided operatives there with sleeping bags, cell phones and other assistance. Later, Faris received attack instructions from top terror leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, authorities said, for what they suggested might have been a second wave of terrorism to follow the Sept. 11 attacks.

The White House said his arrest came after an investigation involving more than a dozen agencies working together in southern Ohio. Faris pleaded guilty to charges of aiding and abetting terrorism and conspiracy in 2003 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Earlier, Bush has said on Wednesday that he was ready to examine alternatives to the US camp for ‘war on terror’ detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but defended the treatment of prisoners there.

Asked in a US television interview whether the camp should be shut down, Bush said: “We’re exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America. What we don’t want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us.”

The United States has faced international criticism of the detention center at its naval base in Cuba since it was opened in early 2002 to house alleged Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants. There are currently about 540 inmates from 40 countries there.

Controversy has risen in recent weeks over allegations about the abuse of Qur’an there and former president Jimmy Carter on Tuesday joined US politicians and The New York Times in calling for Guantanamo’s closure.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday, during a trip to Norway, that the United States was not considering closing Guantanamo. “I know of no one in the US government in the executive branch that is considering closing Guantanamo. It is unfortunately something that is necessary in the world we’re living in,” Rumsfeld told reporters in Stavanger, Norway.

Bush and Rumsfeld insisted prisoners at the camp were treated humanely. The president told Fox News television: “I first of all want to assure the American people that these prisoners are being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. “I say in accordance with, because these weren’t normal military-type fighters. They had no uniforms. They had no government structure.

“These were terrorists, swept up off the battlefield in a place like Afghanistan, for example. And it’s in our nation’s interest that we learn a lot about those people that are still in detention, because we’re still trying to find out how to better protect our country.”

Bush insisted that all allegations of abuse were investigated. He reaffirmed his comment that an Amnesty International report likening Guantanamo to a “gulag” was “absurd.”

“Anytime there’s an allegation of abuse, we investigate,” Bush told Fox, adding, “that what’s transparent societies do.” The US Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo inmates can contest their detention in a civil court, but no prisoner has yet to do so, and no detainee has yet been brought to trial by the US government.