http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/31/judge-critical-of-gitmo-trials-is-dismissed/Judge critical of Gitmo trials is dismissed.»
Army Col. Peter Brownback III, a judge who was hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay and “publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors’ refusal to give evidence to the defense,” has been dismissed. Brownback had threatened to suspend the proceedings against Omar Khadr “unless prosecutors handed over Khadr’s medical and interrogation records since his July 2002 capture in Afghanistan.” Pentagon prosecutors have also rushed to schedule high-profile detainee trials during the height of the presidential campaign season.
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9/11 trial sought during presidential campaign
By CAROL ROSENBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 conspirators on Thursday accused the Pentagon prosecutor of rushing to begin the complex Sept. 11, 2001, mass-murder trial in the height of the presidential campaign season.
The U.S. military attorneys included the claim in a 20-page brief asking the military judge to dismiss the capital charges against alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees.
The document includes an e-mail from a civilian member of the prosecution team proposing to set the trial date for Sept. 15, the Monday after the seventh anniversary of the suicide attacks.
''Not coincidentally,'' the defense attorneys say, ``that would force the trial of this case in mid-September, some seven weeks before the general elections.''
The date, in fact, is 10 days after Sen. John McCain, an architect of Military Commissions law, is expected to be officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate at the GOP national convention in St. Paul, Minn.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/guantanamo/story/551287.html