US Drops Charges Against Five Detainees, Keeps Them in Prison

This is strange. Here's an AP story from 2 days ago by Andrew O. Selsky, US Drops Charges Against Five Detainees. It starts as follows:

"The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense.

None of the men will be freed, and the military said it could reinstate charges later.

America's first war-crimes trials since the close of World War II have come under persistent criticism, including from officers appointed to prosecute them. Some of the harshest words came this month from the very man who was to prosecute the five men against whom charges were dropped.

Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld said during a pretrial hearing for a sixth detainee this month that the war-crimes trials are unfair. Vandeveld said the military was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense in that case, and was doing so in others. He resigned over his concerns.

But the chief Guantanamo prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said Tuesday's announcement was unrelated to Vandeveld's accusations. He said the charges were dismissed because evidence "is being more thoroughly analyzed." He would not elaborate on the nature of the evidence but said the review began before Vandeveld's testimony.

"Rather than refine the current charges, it was more efficient and more just to have them dismissed and charge them anew," he told The Associated Press.

In addition, dismissing the charges allows to Pentagon to avoid deadlines set by the Military Commissions Act to bring the men to trial.

"The way to stop the clock and get a new clock is to dismiss the charges and start again," said Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor who quit in October and later testified about alleged political interference in the military trials."

Ok, it's enough to say that this is sickeningly Kafkaesque. But I first saw article from a post by digby. As is often the case, I follow the link and don't just trust the quoted text, though digby is usually reliable, in this case I was looking for more info. But instead I found less info, here's the article she points to, also by Andrew O. Selsky from two days ago; but notice the text is now quite different, with a different beginning and no statements about "restarting the clock". It's also here at google's AP site. Did the AP change this article after it was published? Why?!?!