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Guantanamo 2: Charges dropped
05/06/2007 07:28 - (SA)
Jane Sutton
Guantanamo Bay - Judges in the US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo dropped all charges against the only two captives facing trial, rulings
that could preclude trying any of the 380 prisoners any time
soon.
The judges said they lacked jurisdiction under the strict
definition of those subject to trial under a law the US Congress drafted last year.
The charges did not affect US authority to hold foreign
prisoners at the Guantanamo detention and interrogation camp in
southeast Cuba.
But it was the latest setback for the Bush administration's
efforts to put the Guantanamo detainees through some form of
judicial process.
It was forced to rewrite the rules last year after the US Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal.
Charges were dropped for Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in
a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15. He was accused of killing
a US soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle
at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Charges were also dropped against Salim Ahmed Hamdan of
Yemen, who is accused of driving and guarding Osama bin Laden.
Hamdan last year won a US Supreme Court challenge that
scrapped the first Guantanamo tribunal system.
- Reuters
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