Pentagon assigns lawyers to two Guantanamo detainees from Sudan and Yemen
WASHINGTON, Feb 07, 2004 (Sudan Tribune) — The US Defense Department on Friday identified two more Guantanamo prisoners – one from Yemen, the other from Sudan – and assigned them Defense Department lawyers, suggesting that a decision to hold war-crimes tribunals could come soon.
Military commanders assigned an Air Force officer to defend Ali Hamza al Bahlul of Yemen and an Army-Navy team of officers to represent Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan.
The two suspects have not been charged with any crime. No trial dates were set, the Pentagon said.
Officials withheld the men’s ages and the circumstances of their capture, and diplomats at the embassies of Sudan and Yemen said Friday that they had no information about the men.
U.S. commanders have said most prisoners at the Guantanamo camp were seized by U.S. troops or handed over by allies as suspected al-Qaida or Taliban members, mostly in Afghanistan, after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Once Bahlul and Qosi meet their lawyers, they are expected to join two other terrorism suspects in special quarters on a portion of the Navy base in Cuba called Camp Echo.
Military commanders are banning reporters visiting Guantanamo from Camp Echo and a new courtroom that was built especially for war-crimes tribunals, at least until Pentagon policymakers decide whether to hold trials and when.
But the flurry of activity around the defense team, which began when Hicks got his lawyer Dec. 4, suggests that Chief Defense Counsel Will Gunn, at least, expects that these four could go before war-crimes tribunals.
Bahlul and Qosi will soon meet their lawyers, officials say, to see whether they accept their Pentagon-chosen advocates, who could represent then in either a plea bargain or future trial.
Qosi was assigned Air Force Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, the first female lawyer named for a prisoner in the largely devout Muslim male population.
At the Sudan Embassy in Washington on Friday, diplomat Khalid Musa said it should be no problem. Women have served for decades as lawyers and judges in Sudan, which is governed by Islamic sharia law.
No Sudanese officials had met with their two citizens at the Guantanamo prison, Musa said. But he said a delegation was expected to go there from Khartoum later this month.
President Bush ordered his administration to devise a military commission system, borrowing from the World War II era system, after the U.S. attacked Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.
About 650 suspected members of al-Qaida or the Taliban are being held at the high-security prison at Guantanamo Bay. Human rights advocates and international law experts have criticized the tribunal rules and the circumstances of the Guantanamo detainees.
Critics complain that the proposed war-crimes trials have no recourse to civilian appeals, unlike the U.S. military justice system, and the prisoners have been defined as enemy combatants, not prisoners of war.
To quell some criticism, the Pentagon on Friday announced a change in rules for defense lawyers. Rather than permit intelligence agencies to routinely eavesdrop on lawyers meeting with the terrorism suspects, the defense attorneys were given the power to challenge the monitoring in court.