It seems that, even trying to live up to the letter of the law, the law can't be lived up to...because of a letter--well, a word actually. But it gets much stranger and less "appealing" as you'll see in this CNN story about an Canadian detainee at Guantanamo.
A military judge on Monday dismissed terrorism-related charges against a prisoner charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.
The move dealt a blow to the Bush administration's attempts to try Guantanamo detainees in military court.
The chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, said the ruling in the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system set up last year by Congress and President Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system.
But Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan and who is now 20, will remain at the remote U.S. military base along with some 380 other men suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw the Khadr case out because he had been classified as an "enemy combatant" (E.C.) by a military panel years earlier -- and not as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant" (A.U.E.C.).
The Military Commissions Act, signed by Bush last year, specifically says that only those classified as "unlawful" enemy combatants (A.U.E.C.) can face war trials here, Brownback noted during the arraignment in a hilltop courtroom on this U.S. military base.
A prosecuting attorney said he would appeal the dismissal of the case.
Under the new war-crimes trial system, the prosecution has 72 hours to appeal, but the court designated to hear the appeal -- known as the court of military commissions review -- doesn't even exist, Sullivan noted.
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