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Court Suspends Saudi's Guantanamo Trial
Jane Sutton
Reuters
May 12, 2006
MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday suspended the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal of a Saudi prisoner until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules next month on the tribunals' legality.
The Saudi captive, Ghassan al Sharbi, is one of 10 Guantanamo detainees charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes and the fourth to have his case delayed pending the Supreme Court ruling that is expected in June.
He had been scheduled to appear before a tribunal for pretrial hearings next week at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
In Washington, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that Sharbi could suffer irreparable harm if he appeared before a tribunal that could be deemed illegal within a month.
He said the Justice Department failed to prove its claim that delaying the tribunal "would imperil the war effort."
President Bush created the military tribunals after the September 11 attacks to try foreign citizens on terrorism charges.
Attorneys for another Guantanamo defendant argued before the Supreme Court in March that the tribunals are unconstitutional because they allow the president, through his military subordinates, to define the crime, choose the prosecutor and judges and set all the rules.
Sharbi, a U.S.-trained electrical engineer, testified at his first tribunal hearing in April that he fought against the United States, was proud of it and was willing to spend the rest of his life in prison as "a matter of honor."
He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and is accused of being part of an al Qaeda cell assigned to build car-bomb detonators for use against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He and the other tribunal defendants would face life in prison if convicted.
The Pentagon is going ahead with pretrial hearings in the cases in which no delays have been granted, in hopes of beginning the first trial in September.
An Afghan prisoner, Abdul Zahir, is scheduled to have a pretrial hearing at Guantanamo next week. He is accused of being an al Qaeda paymaster and taking part in a grenade attack on a car full of civilians.
Zahir's attorneys have not asked for a delay and the presiding officer in his case decided to move forward "to give the accused his day in court," said Air Force Maj. Jane Boomer, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
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