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In Guantánamo, an alleged al-Qaeda killer awaits trial
 [ECONOMIST] THE accused, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a diminutive, clean-shaven Saudi aged 52, looks innocuous as he shuffles into court between two burly guards, a blue-gloved hand on each of his shoulders. A young paralegal in his defence team embraces him. If found guilty by a jury of handpicked uniformed officers, he faces the death penalty.Mr Nashiri is one of Guantánamo’s 15 most "high-value" prisoners, kept in a special jail known as Camp Seven whose location has never been made public. He is charged with criminal masterminding an attack by two suicide-bombers who steered an explosives-laden skiff into the side of an American naval destroyer, the USS Cole, in Aden harbour in 2000, killing 17 American sailors and wounding many more. Nowadays he is what officials at Guantánamo call "highly compliant". He politely declines an offer made by the judge, an air-force colonel, of prayer-breaks. He sits patiently, often looking bored, sometimes quizzical, occasionally adjusting the headphones through which he listens to simultaneous translation into Arabic, as arguments are batted laboriously back and forth between prosecution and defence. What evidence may be admissible when the trial proper begins? How much secret intelligence may be divulged? What medical details may be aired? Who may be called as witnesses, seeing that most of the key ones were interviewed about 15 years ago in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... by the FBI, under a brutal government long since tossed? Was he truly the criminal mastermind or just a foot soldier within al-Qaeda? Above all, may the fact that he was tortured, admitted by the CIA, be used in his defence? What about the videos of his interrogation, which may have been destroyed? "You need to hear from the torturers themselves," says Richard Kammen, Mr Nashiri’s chief lawyer, who for decades has defended, with notable success, Americans facing the death penalty. The court feels not at all martial, more like a conference room in a dreary hotel. The six rows of desks allocated to the accused are furnished with computer screens; the five defendants in the September 11th case are being charged together in the same room. The only clue that this is no ordinary forum are the shackles, unused in Mr Nashiri’s case, screwed into the grey carpet beside each of the defendants’ seats. Behind a window is a soundproofed gallery for 50-odd visitors, including family members of the victims of the accused. There are curtains they may draw, should they wish to weep. The audio transmission has a 40-second lag so that the judge can switch off any mention of classified information. Mr Nashiri’s lawyers repeatedly ask for information to be aired that the prosecution claims would jeopardise national security. Posted by: Fred 2017-01-13 |
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