E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Gitmo Charges Dismissed - or Why We Shouldn't Take Prisoners
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A military judge on Monday dismissed terrorism-related charges against a prisoner charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, in a stunning reversal for the Bush administration's attempts to try Guantanamo detainees in military court.

The chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, said the ruling in the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system set up last year by Congress and President Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system. The ruling immediately raised questions about whether the U.S. will have to further revise procedures for prosecuting prisoners, leading to major delays.

But Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan and who is now 20, will remain at the remote U.S. military base along with some 380 other men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw the Khadr case out because he had been classified as an "enemy combatant" by a military panel years earlier — and not as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant."
So the ruling applies only to him. Enemy combatants are properly not tried for lawful acts of war. They're prisoners of war; so now Omar is to be held at an approvede POW camp until the war in Afghanistan is over.
The Military Commissions Act, signed by Bush last year, specifiies that only those classified as "unlawful" enemy combatants can face war trials here, Brownback noted during the arraignment in a hilltop courtroom on this U.S. military base.

Sullivan said the dismissal of Khadr case has "huge" impact because none of the detainees held at this isolated military base in southeast Cuba has been found to be an "unlawful" enemy combatant.
Unless they've been previously ruled to be lawful enemy combatants like Omar, their status has yet to be determined.
Brownback's ruling came just minutes into Khadr's arraignment, in which he faced charges he committed murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and spying.

"The charges are dismissed without prejudice," Brownback said before he adjourned the proceeding. A prosecutor, Army Capt. Keith Petty, said he had been prepared to show Khadr was an unlawful combatant because he fought for al-Qaida, and that he had videotapes showing Khadr making and planting explosives targeting American soldiers.

The Supreme Court, ruling in favor of a lawsuit brought by Hamdan, last June threw out a previous military tribunal system that was set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, calling it unconstitutional. Congress responded with new guidelines for war-crimes trials and Bush signed them into law.

Khadr's attorneys had decried the charges against him, saying he was a child soldier and should be rehabilitated, not imprisoned.
We'll need to keep hold of him til he is rehabilitated. That's going to take a while ...

Posted by: Glenmore 2007-06-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=190027