Judge Blocks Pentagon on Prisoner’s Transfer

A federal judge Monday ordered the U.S. military not to hand over to the Iraqi government a U.S. citizen suspected of being a senior associate of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The case of Shawqi Omar is the latest legal fight that tests the limits of the Bush administration’s power to keep Americans it has identified as terrorists out of U.S. courts.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina granted a request from Omar’s family to keep him in military custody in Iraq while Urbina decides whether the 44-year-old Kuwaiti native should have his case heard in a U.S. court. A temporary order preventing Omar’s transfer had been set to expire Monday.

Omar has not been charged with a crime or given access to a lawyer since being arrested at his home in Baghdad in October 2004.

The U.S. government said Omar, who also holds Jordanian citizenship, was harboring an Iraqi insurgent and four Jordanian fighters at the time of his arrest and had bomb-making materials. He is described in court papers as a relative of Zarqawi who was plotting to kidnap foreigners from Baghdad hotels.

Iraqi courts are considering charges against him, the government said. Omar would be the first American tried in the new Iraqi legal system. Three other U.S. citizens suspected of ties to the insurgency also are in military custody in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

Omar also has been indicted in Jordan, along with Zarqawi, in connection with an aborted chemical attack on the Jordanian intelligence agency.

Omar’s family described him as a businessman who was seeking reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

The government argued that Omar, held at a succession of American-run prisons in Iraq, was not in U.S. military custody, but rather under the control of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq. Urbina said U.S. forces in effect had control of Omar.

The Justice Department was reviewing the ruling, department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.