Terror Group Claims U.S. Soldiers Captured in Iraq Were Killed
CAIRO, Egypt — An Al Qaeda-umbrella group claimed its militants killed three American soldiers after capturing them last month in Iraq, according to a new video released Monday.
"The Americans sent 4,000 soldiers looking for them and ... fearing that this will have bad repercussions, the state of Islam decided to and announced their killing making it a bitter result for the enemies of God because they were alive and then dead," said an unidentified voice on the video, which was made available to The Associated Press by the Washington-based SITE Institute.
The video does not offer any proof that the soldiers were killed and does not show the soldiers. The militants said in the video that the soldiers were buried, but again, did not offer proof.
Charges against Guantanamo detainee dismissed
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A military judge on Monday dismissed terrorism-related charges against a prisoner charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.
The move dealt a blow to the Bush administration's attempts to try Guantanamo detainees in military court.
The chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, said the ruling in the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system set up last year by Congress and President Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system.
But Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan and who is now 20, will remain at the remote U.S. military base along with some 380 other men suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw the Khadr case out because he had been classified as an "enemy combatant" by a military panel years earlier -- and not as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant."
