PORTLAND – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft Friday praised Portland law enforcement for their cooperation with federal officials that led to the arrest of six local residents on terrorism charges.

“They are key to the war on terror, the strategy of preventing additional attacks on the USA,” Ashcroft said of the Portland Joint Terrorism Task Force.

His speech was greeted by applause from rows of county sheriffs, Portland police officers and FBI agents inside the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse.

Outside and kept at bay by lines of riot police in black uniforms, protesters greeted Ashcroft’s visit with hoots and epithets. Drum beats from the protest could be heard inside where Ashcroft was speaking.

A few hundred protesters in a park across from the courthouse shouted criticism for the attorney general’s intervention in Oregon’s unique physician-assisted suicide law and his stance on the war on terrorism. One woman was dressed as the Statue of Liberty with a gag over her mouth.

Ashcroft was on a swing through Western states to visit regional U.S. Attorney’s offices. The Oregon office handled a complex, 10-month investigation that eventually cracked an alleged terrorist cell operating in the city.

Five people were arrested in October 2002. A sixth person, computer engineer Maher “Mike” Hawash, was arrested this spring. The seventh person charged, Jordanian national Habis al Saoub, remains at large.

The office became the target of protests and critical newspaper editorials for Hawash’s arrest because the 39-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested while getting out of a car in a parking lot and held five weeks at a federal prison without being charged.

During that time, federal officials didn’t acknowledge publicly they had Hawash in custody as a material witness.

Without discussing specifics of the Hawash case, Ashcroft defended material witness detentions Friday.

“People who are detained as material witnesses are detained by federal judges,” he said, responding to a reporter’s question.

Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri who became attorney general in 2001, earlier caused a stir in Oregon by intervening in the state’s assisted suicide law.

At least 91 people have chosen to end their lives with the help of their doctors since the Oregon law took effect in 1998. Terminally ill patients who don’t suffer mental disorders can obtain a lethal prescription from a doctor under the voter-passed law, the only of its kind in the United States.

In November 2001, Ashcroft announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration would discipline Oregon physicians who prescribed lethal doses of barbiturates. The directive was challenged and is currently under appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

On Friday, Ashcroft said it was too early to say whether his department will appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Ashcroft’s Justice Department clashed with Oregon officials again in December 2001, in a dispute that swirled around federal and state law enforcement cooperation.

Portland police officials refused Ashcroft’s request to interview Middle Eastern immigrants for their knowledge about terrorism, saying to do so would violate a state law barring police from interrogating people who are not suspected of a crime.