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| Gitmo Charges Dismissed - or Why We Shouldn't Take Prisoners | |||
| 2007-06-04 | |||
| 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."
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.
"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.
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| Posted by:Glenmore |
| #4 Should have called them POWs then we could have sent them back to Afghanistan for punishment or held them until the war with Al Queda is over (probably decades) without trial. Shooting them rather than capturing them is preferable but it's too late to undo that one. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-06-04 19:21 |
| #3 The entire Khadr Paki/Canadian family are terrorists. No rehab is possible. |
| Posted by: Phineter Thraviger 2007-06-04 17:49 |
| #2 I say we put all the Gitmo guys in a remote controlled plane and fly it into the center of Mecca. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-06-04 15:18 |
| #1 Khadr's attorneys had decried the charges against him, saying he was a child soldier and should be rehabilitated, not imprisoned. Let's compromise and feed him to the sharks. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-06-04 14:56 |