Prosecutors will call a top NATO general to address a potential conflict of interest in the case of a Marine officer charged with failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqi men, women and children, defense attorneys said Friday.

Defense attorneys say Marine Gen. James Mattis, currently NATO's top commander in charge of military modernization, is scheduled to take the stand Monday during a hearing to address a military judge's finding that there was evidence of unlawful command influence in the case of Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani.

The finding means that prosecutors must show at the hearing that the influence did not affect the direction of the investigation, the charges or the future of the case. The judge can take a variety of actions, from barring witnesses and evidence to throwing the case out.

The judge's finding stems from Chessani's claim that a military lawyer who investigated the November 2005 killings had a conflict of interest when he later advised Mattis and other generals overseeing the Haditha trials.

"The prosecution has a high burden to overcome to show that unlawful command influence did not affect the investigation or prosecution of the case," said Chessani's civilian attorney, Brian Rooney. He said defense lawyers would ask that the charges against Chessani be dismissed.

The military cannot automatically discharge people because they're gay, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in the case of a decorated flight nurse who sued the Air Force over her dismissal.

The three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not strike down the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. But they reinstated Maj. Margaret Witt's lawsuit, saying the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military's goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion.

The "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass" policy prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or engaging in homosexual activity.

Wednesday's ruling led opponents of the policy to declare its days numbered. It is also the first appeals court ruling in the country that evaluated the policy through the lens of a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas ban on sodomy as an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy.

The U.S. military on Sunday ordered a court-martial for a civilian contractor charged with aggravated assault while working as an Army translator in Iraq — the first such military prosecution since the Vietnam War.

Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali, who holds dual Iraqi-Canadian citizenship, is accused of stabbing another contractor four times during a fight Feb. 23 on a base near Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad. The victim suffered chest wounds.

In 2006, Congress gave the military authority to prosecute crimes allegedly committed by civilians working for the armed forces.

Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, referred the case, the military said in a statement.

"This is the first time a civilian will be tried by court-martial" under the 2006 amendment, it said.

Sunday's statement said Ali "is being afforded all the same rights, protections and privileges service members receive in military court, including the right to counsel, right to speedy trial, protection against self-incrimination and presumption of innocence."

Ali was being represented by military defense counsel, it added.

During the war in Vietnam, several civilians working for the U.S. armed forces were charged with violations of military law. Although there were several convictions, they eventually were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After a month of often conflicting testimony about a fatal shooting of Afghan civilians, three military officers must now decide whether to recommend criminal charges — but not before reviewing 5,000 pages of evidence.

The rarely used Court of Inquiry heard closing arguments Tuesday from a government lawyer and attorneys representing two officers who led the Marine special operations company involved in the shooting. Its final report, which may take several weeks to complete, could recommend the officers be charged.

"It's too bad the way these Marines have been vilified," civilian lawyer Knox Nunnally, who represented one of the officers, said after the court closed. "These Marines did exactly as they were trained."

An Army report determined as many as 19 Afghan civilians were killed when Marines opened fire after a car bombing targeted their convoy March 4, though a definite number of those killed and wounded varies among several reports. Nunnally said he believes three to five people died and less than 19 were injured.

Marines testified that the bombing initiated a well-planned ambush on their six-vehicle convoy, which was later targeted by small arms fire at different locations. But an Afghan human rights organization said the Marines fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and motorists.

The panel, comprising two Marine Corps colonels and a lieutenant colonel, is investigating the company's commander, Maj. Fred C. Galvin, 38, of the Kansas City area, and a platoon leader, Capt. Vincent J. Noble, 29, of Philadelphia.

The U.S. must hold court hearings to determine whether suspected terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay are prisoners of war or unlawful enemy combatants, a military judge said in a ruling that could delay war crimes trials.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, said in a ruling issued late Monday in Washington that a military administrative panel's status finding is not enough by itself to proceed with a trial at the U.S. base.

Only unlawful enemy combatants can be tried before the military tribunals under a 2006 law that set up the war crimes trials.

Defense lawyers praised Allred's ruling, which would give detainees another opportunity to prove they are beyond the jurisdiction of the tribunals.

But a spokesman for the Office of Military Commissions, Army Maj. Robert Gifford, said the effect of the ruling is limited because it is not binding on other judges. Military prosecutors have not decided whether to appeal, he said.

Allred made the ruling in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden charged with conspiracy and supporting terrorism. The judge held two days of hearings this month on whether the Yemeni is an unlawful enemy combatant or a prisoner of war.

The judge said those two days of hearings would serve as a court hearing on his prisoner-of-war status and is expected to issue a ruling soon.

The U.S. holds about 290 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban and has said it plans to prosecute about 80 before the military tribunals. It has charged three so far and obtained one conviction through a plea bargain.

A Marine reservist has been found guilty of killing an Iraqi soldier while they stood watch together at a guard post in Fallujah. Lance Corporal Delano Holmes was convicted of negligent homicide, but acquitted of the greater charge of unpremeditated homicide at a hearing in Camp Pendleton in California.

He was also convicted of making a false official statement.

A panel of three officers and five enlisted Marines returned the verdict after two days of deliberation over whether the December 31 2006 killing of Private Munther Muhammed Hassin was an act of murder or self-defence.

Holmes, 22, made no remarks in court immediately after the verdict, a Marines spokeswoman said.

A sentencing hearing was set to begin immediately following the verdict.

A special military appeals court, overturning a lower court ruling, on Monday removed a legal hurdle that has derailed war crime trials for detainees at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba. The ruling allows military prosecutors to address a legal flaw that had ground the prosecutions to a halt. The decision, by a three-judge panel of a newly formed military appeals court, was an important victory for the government in its protracted efforts to begin prosecuting some of the 340 detainees at Guantánamo.

The legal flaw involved a requirement by Congress that before the detainees could be tried in military tribunals, they had to be formally declared "alien unlawful enemy combatants." The problem for prosecutors was that while the detainees had been found by a military panel to be enemy combatants, they had not been specifically found to be unlawful.

Under the ruling, prosecutors will be able to present new evidence to the war crimes trial judge hearing a case to support their contention that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. Until now, only one case has been resolved, that of an Australian citizen who accepted a plea deal in March.

The legal flaw was cited in June by a military judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III, in a ruling dismissing charges against a detainee.

The question of the detainees' formal status has stalled the entire war crimes system and frustrated administration officials.

The three appeals judges said yesterday that Judge Brownback had "abused his discretion in deciding this critical jurisdictional matter without first fully considering" the government's evidence. The appeals court sent the case back to Judge Brownback for further consideration.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon said last night that military officials were pleased by the ruling. "We welcome the court's decision," Commander Gordon said. "We will proceed in the most expeditious manner to get the military commission cases to trial."

Lawyers said there was legal uncertainly about whether the defense could appeal Monday's ruling, which came in the case of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian detainee who was charged with killing an American soldier in a firefight and other crimes.

Dennis Edney, Mr. Khadr's Canadian lawyer, said the defense was considering whether to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If there is an appeal, it could delay the resumption of Guantánamo cases yet again.

Mr. Edney said he was disappointed by the military panel's ruling but not surprised. "Omar Khadr still faces a process that is tainted, and designed to make a finding of guilt," he said.

But some military officials expressed relief that the hearing process appeared to be "back on track" as one put it.

The chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, said that after the ruling in Mr. Khadr's case prosecutors would consider filing new charges against other detainees.

"We've got other cases that are ready," Colonel Davis said. "I think very shortly we'll be moving forward with some other cases." Colonel Davis has said as many as 80 detainees may eventually face war crimes charges,

On the same day in June that Judge Brownback dismissed Mr. Khadr's case, a second military judge made a similar ruling in the case of a Yemeni detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Mr. Hamdan's appeal of an earlier effort to prosecute him led to a Supreme Court decision in which the justices struck down the administration's first system for war-crimes trials.

Prosecutors asked the military judge in Mr. Hamdan's case, Capt. Keith Allred of the Navy, to reconsider, but he has not yet issued a reconsidered ruling.

The military appeals court said in its ruling yesterday that Judge Brownback was wrong in concluding that he did not have the authority to decide whether a detainee was an "unlawful" enemy combatant, which would give his court the power to hear a war-crimes case.

The court said the trial judge could hear the government's evidence that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. An unlawful combatant, for example, could be a fighter who does not wear a uniform and conceals his weapons.

In Mr. Khadr's case, prosecutors said their evidence included a videotape of Mr. Khadr, 15 at the time, preparing explosives for use against American forces.

In the ruling Monday, the military appeals judges, the United States Court of Military Commission Review, agreed that the law written by Congress did say that finding by a military panel that a detainee was an "unlawful" enemy combatant was a prerequisite for prosecution. But the judges said Congress intended the Guantánamo courts to apply usual procedures of military courts.

"This would include the common procedures used before general courts-martial permitting military judges to hear evidence and decide factual and legal matters concerning the court's own jurisdiction over the accused appearing before it," the appeals judges wrote.