U.S. refiles Guantanamo war crimes charges

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - The Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals has dismissed and then refiled all of the pending charges, a move military defense lawyers said on Wednesday could make it politically tougher for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to halt the trials.

The administrative step restarts the trial clock on pending cases and could mean new arraignments on Monday for five prisoners charged with plotting the September 11 attacks.

It opens the possibility tat they could plead guilty to death penalty charges in the last hours of the Bush administration, the lawyers said. If they did that, any attempt by Obama to scrap the tribunals upon taking office on Tuesday, as defense lawyers have urged, could draw public anger.

Susan Crawford, the Bush administration appointee overseeing the tribunals, quietly dropped charges in the pending cases on December 17 and refiled them on January 2. That was only disclosed on Monday to military defense lawyers.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, assigned to defend Canadian captive Omar Khadr, called the move a "last-ditch stunt" aimed at thwarting any effort to halt the widely condemned tribunals formally known as "military commissions."

"It is abundantly clear that officials overseeing the military commission process are going all out to make it as difficult as possible for President Obama to follow through on his commitment to end the sham military commission proceedings in Guantanamo," Kuebler said.

Obama has said the prisoners should be tried in regular criminal or military courts. But he has not said whether he will halt cases already in motion in the special tribunals.

Obama's transition team has said he will give an order in the first week of his presidency to shut down the Guantanamo prison but it would take some time to carry out the order and figure out what to do with the 248 remaining prisoners.