Pentagon appeals against Guantanamo ruling
Source: Reuters
(Adds quote, background) By Andrew Gray WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has decided to ask U.S. military judges to reconsider their decision to dismiss charges against two terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman said on Friday. On Monday, the judges said they lacked jurisdiction to try the suspects, in the latest blow to the Bush administration's plans to prosecute inmates at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. "The Department has made a decision to file a motion for reconsideration to the the military commission," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The suspects in the two cases are Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15, and Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is accused of driving and guarding Osama bin Laden. The judges ruled they could not try the pair because they had been designated only as "enemy combatants" while the 2006 Military Commissions Act passed by the U.S. Congress said suspects had to be "unlawful enemy combatants" to face trial. One of the judges, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, said that the Pentagon's definition of an enemy combatant was broad enough to include captives who supported the Taliban or al Qaeda without actually engaging in combat. But the Pentagon insists there is no material difference between the two terms. "Both terms refer to the same legal status of an individual under detention at Guantanamo," Whitman said. The Bush administration and Congress were forced to rewrite the rules last year on trying the Guantanamo captives after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal. The United States is holding about 380 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. Washington has said the prison is legal and necessary to hold many dangerous individuals. Rights groups and foreign governments have called for the jail to be closed, saying that holding inmates there for years without trial violated international legal standards.
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