In a new blow to the Bush administration's troubled military commission system, a military judge has disqualified a Pentagon general who has been centrally involved in overseeing Guantánamo war crimes tribunals from any role in the first case headed for trial.
The judge said the general was too closely aligned with the prosecution, raising questions about whether he could carry out his role with the required neutrality and objectivity.
Military defense lawyers said that although the ruling was limited to one case, they expected the issue to be raised in other cases, potentially delaying prosecutions, including the death-penalty prosecution of six detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Critics of the military commission system said Friday that the judge's decision would provide new grounds to attack the system, which they say was set up to win convictions.
The judge, Captain Keith Allred of the U.S. Navy, directed that Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann of the U.S. Air Force Reserve, a senior Pentagon official of the Office of Military Commissions, which runs the war crimes system, have no further role in the first prosecution, scheduled for trial this month.
Hartmann, whose title is legal adviser, has been at the center of a bitter dispute involving the former chief Guantánamo military prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis of the U.S. Air Force. Davis has said the general interfered in the work of the military prosecution office, pushed for secret proceedings and pressed to rely on evidence obtained through waterboarding.
"National attention focused on this dispute has seriously called into question the legal adviser's ability to continue to perform his duties in a neutral and objective manner," the judge wrote in a decision not yet released publicly but obtained by a reporter. Decisions by Guantánamo judges are not typically released publicly until days after being handed down.
Commander Jeffrey Gordon of the U.S. Navy, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the ruling, saying senior Defense Department officials were reviewing it.
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