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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

U.S. appoints tribunal for three terror suspects

Associated Press

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – The U.S. military announced Tuesday that it has formed a five-member tribunal to try three terrorism suspects held at this U.S. naval base.

The trials – of an Australian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni – would be the first of any of the prisoners swept up in the U.S. war on terror and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Pentagon’s announcement came a day after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that prisoners at the base should have access to U.S. civilian courts to appeal their detention – a decision considered a major blow for President Bush’s stance that the United States can jail suspects without judicial review.

“This is an important first step,” Air Force Maj. John Smith, a lawyer who helped draft commission rules, said in a telephone interview from the Pentagon. “We’d like to have a case tried by the end of the year.”

He said the trials would be held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo, where detainees have been held since January 2002 and now number nearly 600 from 42 countries.

A Pentagon statement said the first to be tried will be David Hicks of Australia, Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan. It was unclear which would go first.

The presiding officer was identified as Retired Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, who is being recalled to active duty. Brownback has 22 years of experience as a judge advocate and nearly 10 years of experience as a military judge, the statement said.

It said the remaining panel members as two U.S. Marine Corps colonels, an Air Force colonel and an Air Force lieutenant colonel, but did not identify them by name.

Al-Qosi is alleged to have been an al Qaeda accountant and bin Laden bodyguard, while al-Bahlul, of Yemen, was labeled a propagandist for bin Laden, according to an official list of charges released by the Pentagon in February.

The men are alleged to have trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.