Guantanamo trials put generals at odds

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The U.S. military was so eager to get the sluggish Guantanamo war crimes trials moving that the legal adviser to the Pentagon overseer adopted a "spray and pray" approach to pursuing charges, a U.S. general testified on Wednesday.

"The strategy seemed to be spray and pray, let's go, speed, speed, speed," Army. Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti said. "Charge 'em, charge 'em, charge 'em and let's pray that we can pull this off."

Zanetti, the deputy commander of the military task force that runs the Guantanamo detention operation, testified in a pretrial hearing for Mohammed Jawad.

The Afghan prisoner is accused of throwing a grenade into a U.S. military Jeep at a bazaar in Kabul in December 2002, wounding two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter.

Jawad's military lawyers said the charges should be dismissed because they were tainted by unlawful influence from Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the officer appointed to give impartial legal advice to the Pentagon official overseeing the war crimes tribunals at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

Wednesday's testimony pitted one U.S. general against another, exposing some of the internal fractures within the military regarding a tribunal process long condemned by human rights advocates as corrupted by politics.

Testifying by video link from the Pentagon on Wednesday, Hartmann said he viewed it as his mission to get the trials moving but in a fair and transparent manner. He acknowledged telling prosecutors he wanted cases that would "capture the public's imagination."

GENERAL'S CONTROVERSIAL ROLE