Iran's supreme leader accuses US of terrorism (AP)

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's supreme leader on Saturday accused the United States of supporting terrorism, pointing to American drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan that he said have killed scores of civilians.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a country whose military forces are responsible for such deaths can't lecture the world about fighting terror.

Strong anti-U.S. salvos are heard regularly from Iran's leadership. Saturday's statement by Khamenei revealed the differences between Iran and the U.S. on the issue of who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter.

"The U.S. and the European governments that follow it describe Palestinian combatant groups who fight for the liberation of their land as terrorists," Khamenei said in a written message to an international conference on combating terrorism that opened Saturday in Tehran.

At the same time, Khamenei said, Israeli military strikes that hit civilians or assassinations of Palestinians by Israeli security agents are not condemned by the West as acts of terrorism.

Iranian leaders say Palestinian groups and the Lebanese Hezbollah are fighting to liberate occupied lands. Iran openly praises groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which have claimed responsibility for suicide bombings and other attacks.

Khamenei said Iran was a victim of what he called U.S. "terrorism" for the 1988 downing of an Iranian passenger plane by the warship USS Vincennes, which killed all 290 people aboard. The U.S. Defense Department said at the time that the crew mistook the plane for a hostile aircraft, which Iran rejects.

Later Saturday, Khamenei warned visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States is seeking to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan.

"Americans are after setting up permanent bases in Afghanistan. This is a dangerous issue. As long as American troops are based in Afghanistan, there will be no real security," state TV quoted Khamenei as saying.

The United States has said it will have all its fighting forces out of Afghanistan by 2014 and that the security of Afghanistan will be turned over to Afghan forces. The U.S. has not asked for any bases or centers to remain under its control.

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Supreme Court won't revive torture lawsuit (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a lawsuit challenging a controversial post-Sept. 11 CIA program that flew terrorism suspects to secret prisons.

The appeal asked the court to examine two controversial aspects of the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, "the extraordinary rendition" program that sent the suspects to secret prisons and the "state secrets privilege."

The high court has refused several other appeals based on the government's invocation of state secrets to derail lawsuits.

The case involved five terrorism suspects who were arrested shortly after 9/11 and said they were flown by a Boeing Co. subsidiary to prisons around the world where they were tortured. A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco cited national security risks in dismissing the men's case last year.

The terror suspects sued Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan in 2007, alleging that the extraordinary rendition program amounted to illegal "forced disappearances." They alleged that the San Jose-based subsidiary conspired with the CIA to operate the program.

A trial court judge quickly dismissed the lawsuit after the Bush administration took over defense of the case from Chicago-based Boeing and invoked the state secrets privilege, demanding a halt to the litigation over concern that top secret intelligence would be divulged.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court reinstated the lawsuit in 2009, but a larger group of judges split 6-5 in saying the case could not go forward.

After reviewing public and classified documents, the majority concluded that at least some information the government wants to protect "are valid state secrets."

The five dissenters said the men should be allowed to try to prove their case using publicly disclosed evidence.

Two of the five plaintiffs remain in prison in Egypt and Morocco.

Justice Elena Kagan took no part in the case because she worked on it when she served in the Justice Department.

The case is Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, 10-778.

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