Omar Khadr is seen before he was imprisoned in 2002. AP PHOTO

Two military judges dismissed charges against a Guantanamo detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden and another who allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, marking a stunning setback to Washington's attempts to try dozens of detainees in military court.

Canadian Omar Khadr, who was arrested on an Afghan battlefield, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, were the only two of the roughly 380 prisoners at Guantanamo charged with crimes under a new military trial system.

The back-to-back rulings complicates efforts by the United States to try other suspected al-Qaida and Taliban figures in military courts.

Defense attorneys and legal experts blamed the rush by Congress and U.S. President George W. Bush last year to restore the war-crimes trials after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the previous system, declaring it unconstitutional. It was a lawsuit by Hamdan that led to the Supreme Court ruling.

In the June 5 cases, the judges ruled that the new legislation says only "unlawful enemy combatants" can be tried by the military trials. But Khadr and Hamdan are identified as enemy combatants, lacking the "unlawful" designation.

"The problem is that the law was not carefully written," said Madeline Morris, a Duke University law professor. " It was rushed through in a flurry of political pressure from the White House ... and it is quite riddled with internal contradictions and anomalies."

The Japan Times Weekly: June 9, 2007
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