NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (AP) – Three inmates at Guantanamo Bay detention center go to trial Monday after being detained by the United States for 18 years without charge in connection with the 2002 deadly bombings at the Bali nightclub and other conspiracies in Southeast Asia.
Indonesian prisoner Encep Nurjaman, known as Hambali, and two Malaysians began their complaint before a military commission in a nearly five-hour hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba, on charges that include murder, conspiracy and terrorism.
Slowed by problems with the performers in the room, the military commission could not finish the long-delayed process and was expected to resume on Tuesday.
In any case, it’s just the first step in what will likely be a long legal journey. The war crimes tribunal of the three faces many of the same problems that have caused other Guantánamo cases to run out for years, including evidence tainted by CIA torture, as well as the challenges posed by the prolonged imprisonment of men without charge. .
“Almost 20 years later, witnesses have died, the picture has changed dramatically,” said Brian Bouffard, a lawyer for one of the two Malaysians, Mohammed Nazir bin Lep. “In my opinion, the possibility of a fair trial is fatal.”
The complaint comes when the Biden administration says it intends to close the detention center, where the U.S. still contains 39 of the 779 men confiscated after the September 11, 2001 attacks and invasion of Afghanistan.
The three men charged in connection with the bombing of nightclubs were held in secret CIA detention for three years, subjected to what the government euphemistically called “improved interrogation,” followed by 15 more at the U.S. base isolated in Cuba.
The decision to charge them, made by a Pentagon legal official at the end of the Trump administration, complicates the closure effort, Bouffard said, as the government would likely have less inclination to release the men facing it. to active processing, even after so many years in custody.
“It will be even harder after a complaint,” he said.
The accusation came out of the course soon, and the Malaysians’ lawyers told the judge that the men could not understand their interpreter, who seemed to speak boldly in both English and Malay. They also revealed that they had previously been assigned another interpreter who worked with prosecutors as they prepared for the parole board similar to Guantánamo.
“He has confidential information that he may be sharing with the prosecution right now,” said Christine Funk, lawyer for defendant Mohammed Farik bin Amin.
Bin lep’s legal team also reported that it planned to introduce an affidavit stating that the Indonesian interpreter was heard saying, “I don’t know why the government has spent so much money on these terrorists; they should to have been murdered a long time ago ”.
The judge, a Navy commander, said the interpreters met the commission’s requirements for the indictment and allowed the hearing to continue, although he said he would consider the issues raised by the defense at a later date. case.
Nurjaman was the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group in Southeast Asia with ties to al-Qaeda. The U.S. government says it recruited militants, including bin Lep and bin Amin, for jihadist operations.
Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah’s suicide bombings in October 2002 of Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club in Bali, Indonesia, and the JW Marriott suicide bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, in August of 2003. The attacks together killed 213 people, including seven Americans, and injured 109 people, including six Americans. Dozens of victims were foreign tourists, mostly Australians.
Prosecutors denounce bin Lep and bin Amin, who were intermediaries in the transfer of money used to finance the group’s operations.
The three were captured in Thailand in 2003 and transferred to CIA “black sites”, where they were brutalized and tortured, according to a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee published in 2014. In 2006, they were arrested. transferred to Guantánamo.
It is unclear why it has taken so long to charge them before the military commission. Military prosecutors filed charges against the men in June 2017, but the Pentagon legal official overseeing Guantanamo Bay cases denied the charges for reasons that have not been publicly disclosed.
The case has many elements that make it complex, including whether the statements the men made to the authorities can be kept in court because of the abuses they experienced under CIA custody, the fact that people have already been convicted and, in some cases, executed, in Indonesia. for the attack and for the time it has taken to file charges.
Some of these same problems have arisen in the case against five Guantanamo detainees accused of planning and aiding 9/11 attacks. They were reported in May 2012 and are still in the pre-trial phase, still without a scheduled trial date.
Funk predicted a long period of defense investigation that will require an extensive trip, once the pandemic is over, to interview witnesses and look for evidence or testimonies that are still available. Still, he said, his client is “anxious and eager to litigate this case and return home.”