Washington – Failed attempts to charge two terrorism suspects left the Pentagon scrambling Tuesday to determine a next step and emboldened Democrats who said the rulings exposed a flawed court system.
Military judges ruled Monday that the Pentagon could not prosecute Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr because they had not first been identified as “unlawful” enemy combatants, as required by a law passed last year by Congress.
Hamdan, of Yemen, is believed to have been chauffeur to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Khadr is a Canadian who was arrested at 15 on an Afghan battlefield, accused of killing a U.S. soldier.
The decision dealt a blow to the Bush administration in its efforts to begin prosecuting dozens of detainees regarded as the nation’s most dangerous terrorist suspects.
U.S. officials chalked up the ruling to semantics and said they were considering their options.
“We certainly disagree with the ruling,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Tuesday. The Defense Department “is looking at the opportunities for appeal, and what they would say.”
Lawmakers and legal experts agreed the decision was not necessarily a showstopper for the trials, and that new legislation might not be necessary to convict Hamdan and Khadr. Democratic critics, however, said the ruling proved the current law was shabbily written.
Last year, Republicans and the White House pushed through legislation authorizing the war-crimes trials after the Supreme Court threw out President Bush’s previous system as illegal and in violation of international treaties.
Bush established the specialized tribunal system shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but had not been able to convict any terrorists because of legal hurdles. After the law passed, the administration convicted Australian David Hicks, who pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaeda. He is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia.
“Five-and-a-half years later, we find what happens with that kind of arrogant, go-it-alone attitude – even conservative courts say ‘no,”‘ said Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Leahy, D-Vt., and other Democrats have drafted legislation that would address various aspects of the law they say is unfair or unconstitutional.
Weariness slowed probe of Hadithah
Camp Pendleton, Calif. – War weariness and a deep suspicion of Iraqis kept Marines from investigating an incident in which their troops in Hadithah stormed three houses and killed 19 people and yet found no weapons or insurgents, officers testified Tuesday.
1st Lt. William Kallop said that on the night of the incident, the Marines in central Iraq were still reacting to the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, killed earlier in the day by a roadside bomb.
“We had just lost a Marine and our guys were stressed out,” Kallop testified at a hearing for an ex-battalion commander accused of not investigating the Nov. 19, 2005, incident. “Guys on their second and third deployments were saying … ‘Here we go again.’ … We had to get ready the next day to go outside the wire again.”
The testimony came as prosecutors probed whether Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, the former battalion commander who was raised in Rangely in northwestern Colorado, had asked questions about how 24 civilians had been killed.
Chessani and three other officers are charged with dereliction of duty for not calling for an investigation.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
