Translation Woes Stall Saudi's Guantanamo Hearing

[Harold F. Schiffman]

April 9, 2008
Translation Woes Stall Saudi's Guantanamo Hearing
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:01 a.m. ET

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A U.S. war crimes court
at Guantanamo reconvened on Wednesday over the case of a Saudi Arabian
prisoner accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up ships, but the
hearing was halted due to translation problems that have plagued the
process.  The defendant, Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, understood
the proceedings well enough to tell the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, that
he believed the court in a U.S. naval base in a remote part of Cuba was
illegal. "I believe there is no international court or local court in the
United States that treats detainees or accused people the same way we are
treated here," al Darbi said through an Arabic-English translator. He
called the tribunal "a crime against humanity, a crime against the law and
a crime that defies any kind of justice."

Pohl tried to question al Darbi on whether he wanted a U.S. military or
civilian lawyer but the exchange was difficult to follow because the
translators' voices competed with the judge's. The translators worked in a
booth outside the courtroom and their voices were broadcast simultaneously
via earphones so the defendant could listen in Arabic and into the
courtroom so his answers could be repeated in English. The lawyers, the
defendant and the court reporter could not keep up, so Pohl recessed the
hearing until the problems could be fixed.

Translation issues have interrupted the hearings since 2004, when the U.S.
military first convened the special court to try foreign captives on
terrorism charges at the naval base, rather than in the regular U.S.
civilian or military courts. The Bush administration considers the 280
Guantanamo prisoners to be unlawful enemy combatants undeserving of the
legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians under international
law. Rights groups have severely criticized the detention camp and the
tribunals as a travesty of justice.

FITS AND STARTS

The trials have moved in fits and starts amid myriad legal challenges and
the whole system had to be recreated after the U.S. Supreme Court struck
down the first version as illegal in 2006.

Charges have been brought against 15 prisoners under the revised system,
including six who could be executed if convicted on charges of direct
involvement in the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 that
killed nearly 3,000 people.

Fourteen of the 15 cases are still pending.

The only one to be resolved was that of an English-speaking Australian
youth who avoided trial by pleading guilty to providing material support
for terrorism. That defendant, David Hicks, finished his nine-month
sentence in his homeland.

Al Darbi is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for
terrorism. He faces life in prison if convicted.

He is accused of training and teaching at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan
in the late 1990s.

The charges also allege that in 2001 and 2002, al Darbi traveled around
the Middle East shopping for boats, global positioning devices and crew
members as part of a plot to use explosives-laden vessels to attack a ship
off the coast of Yemen or in the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the
Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. The plot was never carried out.

Al Darbi is not accused in the September 11 attacks on the United States
but is the brother-in-law of Khalid al Mihdar, one of the hijackers who
crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on that day, killing
187 people.

(Editing by Michael Christie and John O'Callaghan)

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-guantanamo-hearings.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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