JURIST - Paper Chase: Pentagon files new charges against 3 Guantanamo detainees

[JURIST] US Department of Defense prosecutors brought new charges against three detainees being held at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] on Thursday. Jabran al-Qathani, Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, and Algerian Sufyian Barhoumi [charge sheets, PDF] are each charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism based on their alleged involvement with an al Qaeda bomb-making group in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The three were captured by Pakistani forces at a safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March 2002. Reuters has more.

All three men were previously charged [DOD press release] with conspiracy, but those original charges were thrown out when the Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that the military commission system as initially constituted violated US and international law. Congress subsequently passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [DOD materials], which established the current military commissions system. At a military commission hearing in April 2006, al-Qahtani called the US an "enemy of God" [JURIST report] and said that he would prefer death to compliance with a military tribunal. Al-Sharbi admitted fighting against the US [JURIST report] but denied that he was guilty of war crimes at a similar hearing the same month.

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