the torture continues

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All five cases were assigned to military prosecutor Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who quit his Guantanamo assignment last month because he said the U.S. government had withheld information that could help clear an Afghan defendant in an unrelated case.

The Defense Department gave no reason for dropping the charges but said new prosecutors had been appointed to review the cases and could refile the charges later.

The latest setback for the much-criticized Guantanamo court system came after the U.S. government declined to pursue the dirty bomb charges in a Washington court case challenging the detention of Ethiopian-born British resident Binyam Mohamed.

Mohamed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, had said repeatedly in court documents that he is innocent and gave false confessions while being tortured in a Moroccan prison. He had been transferred there extrajudicially and held for 18 months before being sent to Guantanamo.

He said he was beaten, strung up by his arms and cut on the chest and penis with scalpels and told interrogators what they wanted to hear so they would stop.

The Pentagon spelled his surname Mohammed but his civilian lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, says Mohamed is correct. He predicted the charges would be refiled after the November 4 U.S. presidential election.