Sudan seeks details of Guantanamo detainee facing US military trial
KHARTOUM, Feb 25 (AFP) — Sudan has asked its embassy in Washington to get details of the planned US military trial for one of its nationals held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi of Sudan is one of two men in the US detention centre whom the Pentagon said would face trial, the first legal moves against prisoners whose two-year detention without trial has come in for fierce international condemnation.
Sudanese State Foreign Minister Najeib al-Khair Abdel Wahab told AFP that the embassy in Washington had been told to obtain information from the US authorities on the charges, the type of tribunal, the arrangements for defence and the date of Qosi’s trial.
In a statement Tuesday, the Pentagon alleged that Qosi and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen had served as bodyguards and aides to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in which nearly 3,000 people died.
The Pentagon said the two were charged with conspiracy to attack civilians, murder, destruction of property and terrorism, but added that the death penalty would not be sought at the trial whose date would be given later.
The pair are among the more than 650 prisoners from some 40 countries being held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Most are alleged by the US to be members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the US “war on terrorism.”
Human rights groups have condemned Washington for classifying the Guantanamo detainees as “enemy combatants” rather than as prisoners of war. This has prevented them from having the protection of the Geneva Conventions and has been used by Washington to hold them indefinitely beyond the reach of US or other courts.
According to an earlier press statement by Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail, 12 Sudanese had been detained in Guantanamo. Two of them, whose names were not given, were reportedly freed and a government delegation in Guantanamo was seeking the release of the remaining 10.