DoD Adviser Removed from Hamdan Case

[unhappycamper]

DoD Adviser Removed from Hamdan Case
May 12, 2008
Miami Herald

In a rebuke, a military judge banned a key Pentagon general from any role overseeing the Guantanamo war crimes trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, citing interference.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, ordered the Pentagon's General Counsel to assign a new official to oversee the trial in place of Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the Defense Department's legal adviser for military commissions.

Allred issued the 13-page ruling Friday little more than a week after lawyers for the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, of Yemen, called witnesses to testify that during nearly a year as legal adviser Hartmann had pressured for swifter more numerous prosecutions at the commissions.

Hamdan's trial is presently slated to open June 2 as the first full U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II. Whether that schedules still holds is uncertain.

Allred wrote that he found "substantial doubts" about Hartmann's independence from Hamdan's prosecutors, in part "based on the length and intensity of the Legal Adviser's involvement with the prosecution in general, as well the impact of his actions" in Hamdan's case.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/dod-adviser-removed-from-hamdan-case.html