Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
MiamiHerald.com
April 7, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- A Pentagon appointee approved war crimes charges against an alleged al Qaeda foot soldier on Monday, starting the clock toward trial of the Afghan detainee accused of fighting the U.S. invasion.
A Pentagon announcement, handed to reporters en route to pretrial proceedings at Guantánamo, cleared the way for trial by military commission of Mohammed Kamin, about 30, of providing material support for terrorism.
Under the commissions timetable, he should be brought before a judge within a month of presentation of charges.
The Pentagon's chief defense counsel assigned Navy Lt. Richard Federico to defend Kamin. Federico, a Navy career lawyer, was most recently posted in Naples, Italy.
Kamin allegedly joined al Qaeda in January 2003, once the United States had invaded Afghanistan, and was captured four months later.
He allegedly set explosives under a bridge on a route patroled by U.S. forces, and allegedly fired missiles at Khost, Afghanistan, at a time when U.S. and allied forces were occupying it.
Unlike other pending commissions prosecutions, there is no indication in the charge sheets that anyone was specifically hurt by the activities.
The Pentagon's commissions ''convening authority,'' Susan Crawford, approved the charges against Kamin, a Defense Department statement said. The statement did not include a date of approval, or include the final charge sheets.
If convicted, Kamin could be sentenced to life in prison.
The announcement underscored a recent upsurge in prosecution activity in the first exclusively U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
Fourteen Guantánamo captives are now in pretrial status for war-crimes trials. The Pentagon prosecutor is seeking death-penalty charges against half of them, although Crawford has yet to decide whether to move forward on the prosecutions of those seven.
Little is known about Kamin, who, according to Pentagon documents released before his charge sheet, did not personally attend a parole-style hearing that considered in 2006 whether to release him from the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
At the time, he told the panel through a U.S. military officer arguing his case that, were he sent home to Afghanistan, he would return to teaching the Koran and care for a handicapped father.
''The detainee stated the Americans were not as bad as he was led to believe,'' according to an August 2006 document on file in the case, released by the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the parole document, Kamin was a weapons smuggler in Afghanistan who at one point dressed as an Afghan woman to conceal and transport eight Russian-made rockets that he had purchased for al Qaeda.
April 7, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. -- A Pentagon appointee approved war crimes charges against an alleged al Qaeda foot soldier on Monday, starting the clock toward trial of the Afghan detainee accused of fighting the U.S. invasion.
A Pentagon announcement, handed to reporters en route to pretrial proceedings at Guantánamo, cleared the way for trial by military commission of Mohammed Kamin, about 30, of providing material support for terrorism.
Under the commissions timetable, he should be brought before a judge within a month of presentation of charges.
The Pentagon's chief defense counsel assigned Navy Lt. Richard Federico to defend Kamin. Federico, a Navy career lawyer, was most recently posted in Naples, Italy.
Kamin allegedly joined al Qaeda in January 2003, once the United States had invaded Afghanistan, and was captured four months later.
He allegedly set explosives under a bridge on a route patroled by U.S. forces, and allegedly fired missiles at Khost, Afghanistan, at a time when U.S. and allied forces were occupying it.
Unlike other pending commissions prosecutions, there is no indication in the charge sheets that anyone was specifically hurt by the activities.
The Pentagon's commissions ''convening authority,'' Susan Crawford, approved the charges against Kamin, a Defense Department statement said. The statement did not include a date of approval, or include the final charge sheets.
If convicted, Kamin could be sentenced to life in prison.
The announcement underscored a recent upsurge in prosecution activity in the first exclusively U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
Fourteen Guantánamo captives are now in pretrial status for war-crimes trials. The Pentagon prosecutor is seeking death-penalty charges against half of them, although Crawford has yet to decide whether to move forward on the prosecutions of those seven.
Little is known about Kamin, who, according to Pentagon documents released before his charge sheet, did not personally attend a parole-style hearing that considered in 2006 whether to release him from the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
At the time, he told the panel through a U.S. military officer arguing his case that, were he sent home to Afghanistan, he would return to teaching the Koran and care for a handicapped father.
''The detainee stated the Americans were not as bad as he was led to believe,'' according to an August 2006 document on file in the case, released by the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the parole document, Kamin was a weapons smuggler in Afghanistan who at one point dressed as an Afghan woman to conceal and transport eight Russian-made rockets that he had purchased for al Qaeda.