Judge Throws Out Charges in Guantanamo Prisoner Case

[BurtWorm]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/americas/04cnd-gitmo.html?hp


By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: June 4, 2007

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, June 4 — An American military judge here dismissed the war crimes charges against a Canadian detainee today, saying there was a flaw in the procedure the military has used to file such charges against Guantánamo detainees.

The ruling, in the case of the Canadian, Omar Khadr, is likely to stall the military’s war crimes prosecutions here.

There were immediate calls from critics of the prosecutions for Congress to reexamine the legal system it set up last year for trials by military commissions.

The military judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III of the Army, said that Congress authorized charges only against detainees who had been determined to be unlawful enemy combatants, and that the military here has determined only that Mr. Khadr was an enemy combatant. Military lawyers here said the same flaw would affect every other potential war crimes case here.

The ruling will not free Mr. Khadr, and the military prosecutors are permitted to refile their murder and terrorism charges against him. But the ruling appeared to raise far reaching questions about the future of the legal proceedings here because it involved central principles of detention procedures.

Colonel Brownback said that the military commission lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case against Mr. Khadr because he was not designated an “unlawful” enemy combatant by an earlier military hearing here that considered whether he was properly held at Guantánamo....

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