US President-elect Donald Trump has picked three conservative loyalists to lead his national security and law enforcement teams, underscoring his campaign promise to take a hard line confronting Islamist militancy and curbing illegal immigration.
Trump picked US Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general, rewarding a staunch supporter whose sometimes inflammatory statements on immigration have reflected his own.
Retired Army Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, who has championed Trump's promises to take a more aggressive approach to terrorism, was chosen as his national security adviser.
Trump picked Representative Mike Pompeo, a vocal critic of the Obama administration's security policy, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The three choices, announced by Trump's transition team, come as the Republican president-elect works to fill key positions in his administration, which will take over from President Barack Obama on January 20.
Sessions and Pompeo seem likely to be confirmed by the Senate despite heavy resistance from Democrats. Republicans will control a majority, with at least 51 seats in the 100-seat chamber, when Congress reconvenes in January. Flynn's post will not need Senate confirmation.
One of the earliest Republican lawmakers to support Trump's White House candidacy, Sessions opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and was an enthusiastic backer of Trump's campaign promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico. He has also argued for curbs on legal immigration on the grounds that it drives down wages for US workers.
A former Alabama attorney general and US attorney, Sessions, 69, has been in the Senate for 19 years. Allegations he made racist remarks led the Senate to deny his confirmation as a federal judge in 1986.
Civil rights groups slammed Sessions as a poor choice to head a department charged with protecting voting rights and running immigration courts.
Flynn, one of Trump's closest advisers, was fired from the Defence Intelligence Agency in 2014, a move he has attributed to his outspoken views about fighting Islamist militancy. Other officials who worked with Flynn cited his lack of management skills and leadership style as reasons for his firing.
An Army intelligence veteran of three decades, Flynn was assistant director of national intelligence under Obama. He views the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a strategic blunder and has refused to condemn Trump's support for the renewed use of waterboarding, widely considered to be torture and banned by Obama.
Pompeo, 52, a third-term Republican congressman and former US Army officer who founded an aerospace company, was a surprise pick to lead the CIA.
A member of the House Intelligence Committee, Pompeo has called for a revival and expansion of a now-defunct domestic spying program to include "financial and lifestyle information" as well as phone records. He has said that Edward Snowden, a former government contractor who uncovered the spying program and who now lives in Russia, should get the death penalty if he is ever tried and convicted.
Pompeo has been one of the most aggressive critics of the Obama administration's handling of a 2012 attack on US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans.
Nevertheless, Democrats who have worked with him joined Republicans in describing Pompeo as knowledgeable and hard working.
