Sudanese Guantanamo detainee to fight US military tribunal

KHARTOUM, Dec 11 (AFP) — A Sudanese held by the United States as a war on terror suspect has joined other detainees fighting the use of special military tribunals to try his case, his lawyer said.

This 2003 US Navy photo shows Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in orange jumpsuits sitting in a holding area at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AFP).

Ibrahim Ahmed al-Qosi, accused of being a financial expert for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is one of the four detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for whom war crimes hearings have started.

But the case against Qosi and other detainees has been frozen because a US civilian court has ruled that Guantanamo inmates should be given prisoner-of-war rights under the Geneva Conventions.

The United States has held the detainees as “enemy combatants” which gives them reduced rights under international law, arguing that they are not fighting for a state.

Qosi’s military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Sharon Schaffer is in Sudan to meet legal officials and see Qosi’s family.

She told the Khartoum daily, Al Hayat, that the defence had also started action in a US federal court seeking the protection of the Geneva Conventions following the breakthrough decision for another inmate last month.

Later, she told reporters in Khartoum that she would defend her client “to the last.”

Qosi’s trial before a special military commission specially created for war on terror inmates was to have started in February but has now been postponed until the US courts sort out the status of all the inmates.

The military lawyer, who arrived Thursday, said she would travel to Atbara, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Khartoum, to see Qosi’s family and hand them a message in which he reassured them over his physical and psychological health.

The newspaper said Schaffer and an accompanying defence council member met Friday with Sudanese Bar Association President Fathi Khalil, briefed him on Qosi’s case and asked for more information about the inmate.

Schaffer said that Qosi’s morale was high after he was moved from solitary detention to collective custody.