Pentagon charges "dirty bomb" conspirator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon prosecutors have charged an Ethiopian-born prisoner with conspiring to commit terrorist attacks in the United States, including planning to use a radioactive "dirty bomb," according to documents released on Tuesday.

The charges against Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who had been a legal resident of Britain since 1994, were filed last week and made public on Tuesday.

Mohamed, who was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, is accused of training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, joining a squad of al Qaeda bomb-makers in Pakistan and plotting to set off a radioactive bomb in the United States.

The charges still must be approved by the Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo trials.

According to the Pentagon, Mohamed was trained in warfare and bomb-making by al Qaeda. Because he was educated as an electrical engineer, spoke English well and had refugee status in Britain, al Qaeda assigned him to a "specialized terrorist mission," the Pentagon documents said.

He received training and plotted various types of attacks on targets in the United States with Jose Padilla, a Chicago gang member once accused by the Bush administration of plotting a radioactive bomb attack.

Padilla was sentenced by a U.S. court in January to 17 years and four months in prison for supporting terrorism but never charged with plotting a radioactive bomb attack.

RENDITION, TORTURE CLAIMED

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband sent a formal request to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in August 2007, asking for the release of Mohamed and other British residents then held at Guantanamo.

Britain, a close U.S. ally, long ago won the release of all British citizens held at the controversial U.S. prison camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Mohamed is one of only two British residents remaining at Guantanamo. The other, Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, is seeking repatriation to Saudi Arabia.

Mohamed has said in court documents that he is innocent and gave false confessions while tortured in a Moroccan prison, where he was extrajudicially transferred 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.

His case has been highlighted by human rights groups in investigations into alleged "extraordinary renditions" by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency -- secret flights to deliver terrorist suspects to countries where they then faced torture.

The United States denies torturing suspects or transferring them to countries that do.

Mohamed is one of 19 prisoners facing charges in the Guantanamo tribunals established after the September 11 attacks to try non-American captives who the Bush administration considers unlawful "enemy combatants" not entitled to the legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians.

The defendants include five men facing arraignment on Thursday on death penalty charges of plotting the hijacked plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in 2001.

The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized the military commissions system as inherently unfair to defendants, in part because it allows the use of hearsay and secret evidence to yield convictions.

(Additional reporting by Jane Suttton; Editing by Bill Trott)