GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA -- Bush administration supporters handed detention policy setbacks to the lameduck White House Wednesday with a series of actions: from a trusted appointee who ruled a Guantánamo detainee was tortured beyond prosecution to a judge who ordered the release of a detainee, held since age 14, on grounds of false imprisonment.

In between, the Pentagon arraigned an alleged terrorist trainer here and announced fresh war crimes charges against three more Guantánamo captives.

That meant 21 of the 250 detainees were in pretrial proceedings, including Toronto-born former teen captive Omar Khadr -- scheduled to go to trial Jan. 26, unless the new Obama administration stops it.

The fast-paced new events came with less than a week left in the Bush administration. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to close the prison camps here, deliberatively, but has not said whether he will stop war court proceedings.

CRAWFORD ON RECORD

The setbacks started in the morning with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward quoting Susan J. Crawford, the Bush appointee entrusted with overseeing military commissions, as saying captive Mohammed Qahtani's treatment in interrogation meant he could never be prosecuted by a U.S. court.

''We tortured Qahtani,'' said Crawford, a retired judge and lawyer who has served in several Republican administrations.

Qahtani was subjected to lurid interrogation techniques, including being dressed in women's underwear and ordered to bark like a dog. He also was exposed to loud music, strobe lights, deprived of sleep and dehydrated -- while military medical staff monitored his health.

Late Wednesday, U.S District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the Pentagon to free Mohammed Gharani, 21, a native of Chad who was raised in Saudi Arabia and captured in Pakistan at age 14.

Gharani had been held since early 2002.

Leon, appointed to the bench by President Bush, had earlier agreed with the Bush administration that its presidential war powers forbade federal habeas corpus review. He was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, and has been reviewing Guantánamo cases for months.

Reaction to the Washington Post story was swift:

• White House press secretary Dana Perino defended the president's policy. ''It has never been the policy of this president or this administration to torture,'' she said.

• Qahtani's Pentagon defense attorney, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, said the new government should repatriate the man to his native Saudi Arabia.

`WE CAN'T BE TRUSTED'

''I think he should be released to the custody of the Saudis. We've proven fairly certainly that we cannot be trustedwith his custody,'' Broyles told visiting media .

• Lawyers for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of helping orchestrate the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, asked Crawford in an urgent letter to dismiss his capital criminal charges based on his treatment in CIA custody before President Bush ordered his transfer here 30 months ago.

''The government has admitted to waterboarding Mr. al-Nashiri,'' he said. ``By itself, waterboarding amounts to torture: The State Department has criticized other countries for engaging in techniques of torture, such as near-drowning.''

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