Guantanamo breakthrough

The New York Times' William Glaberson just reported that the military judge ruling on a case of a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo stated that ALL the cases suffer from the same procedural defect:

The military judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III of the Army, said that Congress authorized charges only against detainees who had been determined to be unlawful enemy combatants, and that the military here has determined only that Mr. Khadr was an enemy combatant. Military lawyers here said the same flaw would affect every other potential war crimes case here.

The ruling will not free Mr. Khadr, and the military prosecutors are permitted to refile their murder and terrorism charges against him. But the ruling appeared to raise far reaching questions about the future of the legal proceedings here because it involved central principles of detention procedures.

Colonel Brownback said that the military commission lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case against Mr. Khadr because he was not designated an “unlawful” enemy combatant by an earlier military hearing here that considered whether he was properly held at Guantanamo.

Link to full article in title of this post, above.