Miami ? A military judge appointed to preside at war crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, does have the power to rule whether Canadian captive Omar Khadr is an “unlawful enemy combatant,” a military panel ruled Monday.

The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review reversed a June ruling by Army Col. Peter E. Brownback, a military judge who found the Pentagon’s own status hearings flawed as a gateway to the war crimes trial of Khadr, 21.

The Canadian is accused of terrorism-related charges in the July 2002 grenade killing of a U.S. Army sergeant – a Special Forces medic – in Afghanistan. Brownback dismissed the charges; the Military Commission Review reinstated them.

The decision means the Bush administration can restart its beleaguered military commissions, or war crimes tribunals, which had been paralyzed since Brownback’s earlier ruling and a similar one by a Navy judge in the case of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36.