Pentagon adviser barred from Gitmo case

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's top legal adviser in the Office of Military Commissions was disqualified late last week from participating in the prosecution of a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by a Navy officer who ruled that the adviser exerted improper influence over a team of prosecutors and may have compromised the case's fairness.

Capt. Keith Allred, who is presiding over hearings in preparation for the military's trial of an alleged driver for Osama bin Laden, determined that Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann was too closely tied to prosecutors. He is supposed to be a neutral adviser to the official directing the commissions.

In a 13-page ruling issued late Friday, Allred found that Hartmann pressured prosecutors to present certain cases because they were "sexy," suggesting that factors other than a case's merits "were at play." He also found that Hartmann appeared to be pushing for prosecutors to use evidence derived by coercion, something Allred found to be "an effort to influence the professional judgment" of the prosecutors.

Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said defense officials are reviewing the ruling and could not yet comment. The trial against the detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, was expected to begin next month.

Hartmann's removal from the case could mean that top Defense Department officials will need to appoint a new legal adviser in Hamdan's case and might need to consider doing so in other cases in which Hartmann has been involved, including pending military trials against six suspected Sept. 11 conspirators.

Hartmann announced the charges against those men, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and has been supervising the prosecution of those cases. Arraignments are expected within the next few months.

Hartmann has been at the center of a dispute involving the former chief Guantánamo military prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis of the Air Force.

Davis has said the general interfered in the work of the military prosecution office, pushed for closed-door proceedings and pressed to rely on evidence obtained through techniques that critics call torture.

Hartmann said he could not comment, and his spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

Material from The New York Times is included in this report.