A Pentagon spokesman said Monday that Omar Khadr, 20, the young Canadian imprisoned at Gutanamo Bay, Cuba, was cleared of charges, as a US military said his case did not fall under the authority of the military commission.

Khadr, who is the son of Ahmed Khadr, one of Osama bin Laden’ deputies, was 15 years old at the time of his capture. Omar Khadr decided freely to join al-Qaeda after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In July 2002, he was accused to kill US Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer with a hand grenade.

The US judge, Colonel Peter Brownback, dropped the charges because they did not fall under the military tribunal's jurisdiction.

An earlier hearing had not classified Khadr as an unlawful military combatant, but only as a military combatant. The Military Commissions Act, signed by President George W. Bush last year, specifically says that only those classified as "unlawful" enemy combatants can face war trials here, Brownback noted.

The ruling didn't mean freedom for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. He will remain jailed at Guantanamo on suspicion of having links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Jumana Musa, Amnesty International USA Advocacy Director for International Justice and Domestic Human Rights and Amnesty International's legal observer at the military commission hearings in Guantanamo Bay for the last two years, issued the following statement in response to today's significant ruling by the military commissions judge to drop charges against Omar Khadr:

"Today's ruling is the most significant setback since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the original military commissions. It also signals that these commissions need to be scrapped and the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay must be closed now. The judge's decision clearly indicates that a fair trial is not possible within a system that is being developed as it proceeds.

It raises more questions about the Bush administration and Congress' wisdom and logic in rushing to patch together a new system of justice, when there are fully functioning federal courts that can not only offer fair trials but also come with established procedure."