Enlarge imageBy Jane Sutton
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - U.S. military tribunals convene on Wednesday in the war crimes trials of two Guantanamo prisoners, a Yemeni accused of guarding Osama bin Laden and a Canadian captured in Afghanistan when he was just 15 and charged with murdering an Army medic.
The hearings will convene on the fourth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at Guantanamo and represent the latest attempt by the Pentagon to move forward with the trials, which have been repeatedly blocked by legal challenges.
The United States has faced criticism at home and abroad for treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and for holding them indefinitely. Only nine of about 500 prisoners have been charged since the United States began holding suspects at the base in January 2002.
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Federal judges have halted proceedings against other prisoners until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether President George W. Bush had the authority to create the tribunal system. The high court was scheduled to hear arguments in March.
The last tribunal hearing was held in November, shortly before the Pentagon suspended the process in the face of the negative court rulings.
On Wednesday, Yemeni Ali Hamza al Bahlul and Canadian Omar Khadr may enter pleas to the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, a military spokeswoman said.
The hearings are mainly to discuss trial scheduling, to allow lawyers to question tribunal members and to decide whether Bahlul must accept a military lawyer assigned to him.
Bahlul, 37, is charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, and had asked to act as his own attorney. Tribunal authorities denied the request and Bahlul has refused to meet with his lawyer, Army Reserve Maj. Tom Fleener.
Fleener called the process a sham and said authorities were making up rules as they went along. He said Bahlul has the right to represent himself under U.S. and international law and forcing a lawyer on him was an attempt "to add some air of legitimacy to an otherwise wholly illegitimate process."
Chief prosecutor Col. Moe Davis defended the action, saying the law had not contemplated actions like those of al Qaeda.
"We’re facing an enemy like we’ve never faced before," Davis said. "The law has to adapt to today’s environment."
THE CHARGES
The charges say Bahlul attended an al Qaeda training camp and pledged allegiance to bin Laden, wearing explosive belts while acting as his bodyguard. He also is accused of making recruiting videos for al Qaeda, including one praising the October 2000 attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole.
During his hearing in August 2004, Bahlul told the court through a translator, "I am from al Qaeda and the relationship between me and September 11 ..."
The presiding officer cut him off and the hearing was recessed.
Khadr, now 19, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and is accused of throwing a grenade that killed an Army medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound near Khost in 2002.
Despite his age at the time of capture, he is being tried as an adult. The civilian lawyers working with Khadr’s military attorney, Richard Wilson and Muneer Ahmad, said that violates international law.
"If the United States puts Omar Khadr on trial for ’war crimes’ alleged to have been committed at the age of 15, this will be the first such trial in history, and certainly in the modern era of international criminal justice beginning with the Nuremburg trials following World War Two," they wrote in a letter urging Canada to intervene.
The Canadian government has said little about the case, except to ask that Khadr not be executed if he is convicted.
Canadian troops joined the U.S.-led war to oust al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors from Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and were stationed at facilities Khadr is accused of scouting for future attacks.
U.S. military lawyers representing other Guantanamo prisoners have challenged nearly every aspect of the tribunals. Rights groups have denounced them as stacked against prisoners and said they could allow the use of evidence obtained through torture.
