Five days after the fact, the Pentagon disclosed Tuesday that it had sworn out war crimes charges against a former British resident now held at Guantánamo, alleging he discussed staging a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' attack to free captives at the remote U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 29, faces a maximum life in prison, if convicted of the terror charges. The charges were sworn out by the Pentagon case prosecutor on May 28 but posted for the first time on the Defense Department Web site on Tuesday.

The eight-page charge sheets allege that Mohamed convertedto Islam, trained as an al Qaeda bomb-maker in Afghanistan and then moved on to Pakistan, where in April 2002 he allegedly plotted a ''dirty bomb attack'' with the Brooklyn-born, former gang member José Padilla. ...