Davis was also known to have been unhappy with the administration's back-channel intervention in the David Hicks case, the only case the military commissions have undertaken. A March plea bargain sent Hicks home to Adelaide, Australia, to serve a token nine-month term for terrorism charges that can carry a life sentence.
The White House intervention was perceived as a favor from President Bush to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was facing questions about Hicks in his reelection campaign. It was an intrusion Davis clearly resented.
The commissions' convening authority, Susan J. Crawford, a former top official of Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Department staff, negotiated the sharply reduced punishment without Davis' knowledge.
Hicks was one of only three of the roughly 330 prisoners at Guantanamo charged with war crimes under the newly reconstituted tribunals following last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the original military commissions forum was unconstitutional.
Congress enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006 three months later in an attempt to restart the prosecutions, only to have fresh legal challenges filed in federal courts to the first U.S. attempt to prosecute war criminals since World War II.
The two remaining cases, against a Canadian who was 15 at the time of his capture and a Yemeni accused of serving as a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, have been in limbo since two commission judges ruled in June that they lacked jurisdiction to try the cases at Guantanamo.
A ruling two weeks ago by the newly impaneled Court of Military Commission Review overturned the jurisdictional decision and instructed the judges to resolve the technicality that led to their rulings, clearing the way for trials to begin.
Davis had reiterated in June that he expected to bring new charges against dozens of terrorism suspects this autumn.
Disagreements about which cases to proceed with first and what charges might be reasonably proved had delayed the filing of charges beyond the three formally accused in February.
Efforts by the State Department to repatriate many of the prisoners to their home countries are also believed to have slowed the indictments; the administration probably wouldn't want to release or transfer any Guantanamo prisoner facing prosecution.
The military commissions' defense chief, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, and its judge advocate spokeswoman, Army Maj. Beth Kubala, also left their posts in recent weeks.
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carol.williams@latimes.com
