Ethiopian to be charged with war crimes

WASHINGTON, June 4 (UPI) -- A Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee will be charged with war crimes for allegedly participating in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb," the Pentagon said.

Binyam Mohammed, 29, of Ethiopia, allegedly was part of an al-Qaida plot to use the bomb and blow up apartment buildings in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Mohammed's attorneys, in a statement released by the British legal rights group Reprieve, accused the Pentagon of rushing "to charge as many people as possible at Guantanamo Bay prior to President Bush leaving office."

His attorneys say Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken by the CIA to Morocco where he was beaten, hung from poles during long interrogation sessions and cut in his genitals by a scalpel, the Times reported.

"The least the British government can do is insist that no British resident be charged in a kangaroo court on evidence tortured out of him with a razor blade," said Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve director and attorney.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007 sought repatriation to Britain for Mohammed, who could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and material support for terrorism charges.