One judge in the Guantanamo Bay military tribunal has threatened to suspend the case against a Canadian terrorism suspect if Pentagon prosecutors continue withholding evidence from the defense.
Another judge has disqualified an Air Force general from advising the war-crimes court because of what he agreed was the general's politically motivated "unlawful command influence."
On Tuesday, the Pentagon lawyer in charge of the military tribunal approved charges that carry the death penalty against confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators but dropped them against the alleged "20th hijacker" without saying why. Mohammed Qahtani in February had been designated for prosecution along with the others.
As the six-year effort to bring alleged terrorists to justice crawls toward its first trial next month, military jurists have been distancing themselves from the prosecutorial juggernaut that appeared to have been launched earlier this year to bring swift convictions before the November election.
Tribunal Convening Authority Susan J. Crawford's approval of the capital charges against Mohammed and four other detainees sets off a 30-day clock for their arraignment. But defense lawyers have signaled that they will challenge procedures and the admissibility of evidence in their cases, which will probably delay the trial until at least the end of the year.
Qahtani's Army lawyer, Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, said Crawford seemed to have recognized that his client couldn't be prosecuted because of the way he had been treated at Guantanamo. "An objective view of the evidence in his case . . . would convince any attorney with criminal law experience that the charges should be dropped," Broyles said.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights said a leaked interrogation log showed that Qahtani had been subjected to beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, attacks by dogs, threats against his family members and further threats that he would be sent to foreign countries that condone torture.
Crawford dismissed the charges "without prejudice," meaning they could be refiled later. Military tribunal rules "do not require the convening authority to explain her decisions, and she did not do so in this case," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
Human rights lawyers cast the turnabout as tantamount to admitting that any evidence against the Saudi prisoner had been obtained through torture and was inadmissible.
