Military judge stands by Guantanamo dismissal

DAVID McFADDEN

A military judge has refused a Pentagon request to reconsider his dismissal of charges against a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, ruled Friday that the government’s renewed legal argument has not resolved a lack of jurisdiction in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was arrested on an Afghan battlefield in 2002.

Khadr is one of two detainees whose military trials fell apart because they were not identified as “unlawful” enemy combatants.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said Saturday that the military is preparing to file a challenge to the Court of Military Commissions Review, a Washington-based appeals court that was set up within a week of the dismissal of the two detainees’ charges on June 4.

“We’re disappointed with the judge’s decision in this matter,” Gordon said.

Another judge who threw out the case against Yemeni detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan has not yet ruled on prosecutors’ motion to reconsider, Gordon said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees can use federal courts to challenge their confinement, reversing an April decision not to hear arguments on the issue.

Like the rest of the detainee population, Khadr and Hamdan previously were identified by military review panels only as enemy combatants, lacking the “unlawful” designation required by the law that authorized the new trials. Pentagon officials have described the problem as largely semantics.

But the cases have dealt a blow to the Bush administration in its efforts to begin prosecuting dozens at the detention center in southeastern Cuba.

Last year, Republicans and the White House pushed through legislation authorizing the war-crimes trials after the Supreme Court threw out Bush’s previous system as illegal and in violation of international treaties.

Khadr and Hamdan are the only ones currently in the roughly 380-prisoner population at Guantanamo who have been charged with crimes under a reconstituted military trial system.

One other detainee charged under the new system, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia.

RSS TrackBack URL

Translate: