Thank G-d Bush is still President: Khadr charges dropped, reinstated: Lawyer
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The prosecution of Omar Khadr and other charged Guantanamo Bay detainees was thrown into confusion Tuesday evening after it was claimed the U.S. government had secretly withdrawn - then reinstated - all the charges against them.
The move comes less than a week before Khadr’s final hearings at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, and puts his trial’s scheduled start date in doubt.
“As of today, there is no trial date in the military commission case of Omar Khadr,” navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, the Pentagon-appointed lawyer for the Canadian-born terror suspect, said in a media release.
The release claimed that prosecutors and judges “are expected to steamroll ahead and try to quickly re-establish the trial schedule” when Khadr appears before the commission Monday. He is accused of five war crimes charges, including murder in the killing of a U.S. soldier in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.
The release speculates the main aim of the “withdrawal and re-referral” move is to lock in prosecutions of so-called “high value” detainees ahead of the inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama. He has pledged to shut down the detention camps and said traditional military and civilian courts can prosecute detainees better than the commissions, which have faced criticism for not providing the full range of rights guaranteed in traditional U.S. systems.
Among the “high-value” detainees is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has said he was responsible for planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks “from A to Z” He claimed his confession was not coerced, but opponents of the Guantanamo system dispute that.
Mohammed and several other accused 9/11 conspirators indicated in December they wanted to plead guilty, but were administratively unable to do so.
Shortly after that attempt, Kuebler’s release claims, the military commissions prosecuting authority Susan Crawford on Dec. 17 “secretly withdrew” charges, then reset them last Friday. In doing so, the release continues, she provided a clean slate for guilty pleas to be accepted[…]