MICHAEL GILBERT, The News Tribune, Feb 24, 2007

The Army refiled charges Friday against Lt. Ehren Watada, resuming the government’s case against the former Stryker officer who refused orders to go to Iraq.

The Fort Lewis soldier again stands accused of missing his unit’s June 22 flight to the Middle East and four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for statements he made to the media and at a speech in Seattle.

Watada faces up to six years in prison and dismissal from the Army if he’s convicted.

His attorney said Friday that he will press the argument that Watada can’t be tried a second time for the same alleged crime.

The charges are the same ones Watada faced before his court-martial ended in a mistrial Feb. 7, plus two conduct-unbecoming counts that had been dismissed in an agreement with prosecutors.

It was this agreement that was the basis for the mistrial. The Army judge, Lt. Col. John Head, said he believed Watada did not fully understand the implications of the deal, which would have cut two years from his prison sentence.

An Army spokesman said the next step will be for the judge to set a date for the new court-martial. Head had earlier set the retrial for next month but Watada’s attorney said he has a conflict and needs a later date.

Defense lawyer Eric Seitz, based in Honolulu, said Friday that he notified the Fort Lewis court this week that he has eight other trials between now and July and won’t be available to retry the Watada case for several months.

In addition, he said he will first file a motion seeking to have the charges dismissed on the grounds that resuming prosecution would violate Watada’s constitutional protection against double jeopardy.

“That will the first order of business as far as we’re concerned,” Seitz said.

But he added he will ask that the motion be heard by a judge other than Head or Col. Debra Boudreau, the senior judge at Fort Lewis, because he believes both have already made up their minds against his double-jeopardy argument.

Watada was to have gone to Iraq with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division – currently operating in Baghdad – but refused because he said he believes the Iraq war is illegal and that taking part would make him party to war crimes.

The conduct-unbecoming charges are in connection with statements Watada made at a Tacoma news conference announcing his decision, and at a Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle.

The two revived charges are related to statements he made in interviews with reporters from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, his hometown paper, and Truthout.org, an online alternative journal.

Partly to avoid a subpoena fight with the two reporters who did the interviews, the Army dropped the two charges after Watada admitted in the pretrial agreement that he made the statements.

But during the court-martial, Head concluded that Watada didn’t understand another section of that agreement. When Watada told the judge he would maintain he was innocent of the missing-movement charge, Head declared the mistrial.