Terror camp translator arrested

A DOCTOR working as a translator at the US prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was arrested yesterday.

An FBI official said Dr Ahmad Mahalba was held at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

He said Dr Mahalba had stopped in Boston on Monday after arriving on a flight from Cairo.

Customs agents noticed documents that appeared to have come from the prison camp and which they suspected of being classified. The FBI was called in to interview Dr Mahalba, who denied the documents were his, the official said.

After questioning, the FBI arrested Dr Mahalba on charges of making false statements.

He was being held in Boston and further charges are possible, said the official, who declined to describe the nature of the documents in the doctor’s possession.

Earlier, authorities charged an enlisted air force man, Ahmad al-Halabi, with spying. They claimed he had sent classified information about the Guantanamo facility to an “unspecified enemy”. He was also accused of planning to give other secrets about the prison to someone travelling to Syria.

When he stepped off a flight from Guantanamo Bay in July, Mr Al-Halabi allegedly was carrying a computer loaded with classified information about the base, along with 180 messages from detainees.

A military investigator said last week that Mr Al-Halabi had been under investigation before he arrived at the base.

The US Air Force Office of Special Investigations began looking into his case in November 2002 while he was a supply clerk at Travis Air Force Base in California, the agent wrote in court documents.

He was sent to the Cuban base weeks later as an Arabic language interpreter for the al-Qaida and Taliban suspects there.

Two of the airliners that al-Qaida terrorists crashed into New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, had been hijacked shortly after taking off from Logan airport.

Another suspect is Army Captain Yousef Yee, a Muslim chaplain who is being detained without charge at the navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina.

Mr Al-Halabi is behind bars at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, forbidden to speak Arabic.

Lieutenant Colonel Pamela Hart, a spokeswoman for Guantanamo Bay, said security there had been strengthened in the wake of the arrests.

She said that officials were making certain that restrictions on handling documents, making phone calls and sending e-mails were being followed.

Mr Al-Halabi has said that he is innocent. One of his lawyers, Air Force Major James Key, said Mr Al-Halabi was a naturalised US citizen and a patriotic American.

The most serious of the 32 charges against him carries a possible death sentence. The implication is that He was helping the prisoners communicate among themselves and with the outside world.