Guantanamo set for terror suspect hearings

Four suspected al-Qaida fighters will be formally charged with war crimes this week as the US military opens the first legal hearings for foreign prisoners held at the US Navy base Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The four terror suspects to be arraigned are an alleged al-Qaida accountant, a poet who is accused of crafting terrorist propaganda, a man who drove and protected Osama bin Laden, and an Australian who fought with Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban.

The four prisoners will be arraigned in preliminary hearings this week before their cases go to military commissions, or trials, in an unprecedented judicial process that foreign governments, lawyers and human rights groups have criticised.

While the maximum sentence the four men face is life in prison, the military commissions – the first in nearly 60 years since the United States tried German saboteurs – will have the power to sentence others to death, and there is no independent appeal process.

Significant challenges already exist ahead of the first hearing scheduled for tomorrow.

One defence lawyer has not seen his client in four months because of a government delay in giving clearance to a translator.

Another defence lawyer has withdrawn from the case after accepting another job, leaving her client with no representation. Others say the broad restrictions, which include the military’s right to monitor conversations between lawyers and clients, will make it nearly impossible to win their cases.

“I’ve never gone into a hearing with so little information,” said Lieut Commander Charlie Swift, a military defence lawyer representing Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

Hamdan, a 34-year-old Yemeni driver for Osama bin Laden, is scheduled to be arraigned first tomorrow on a charge of conspiracy to commit war crimes for his ties to al-Qaida.

Two of the other men face similar al-Qaida conspiracy charges: Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, 33, also of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, born in 1960, of Sudan.

The fourth defendant is David Hicks, 29, of Australia, who faces the broadest set of charges – conspiracy to commit war crimes as well as aiding the enemy, and attempted murder for allegedly firing at US or coalition forces in Afghanistan before his capture.

Only four Guantanamo detainees have been charged so far. Most of the men in the camp have been refused access to lawyers.

All are considered enemy combatants, a classification that unlike prisoners of war, allots the men fewer protections under the Geneva Conventions. Military commissions are reserved for foreign-born captives and have lower standards for prosecution than American civilian courts.

At this week’s open preliminary hearings, expected to last four days, charges will be read to the men, who can enter pleas, and their lawyers can make motions. It could be months before the military commissions, or trials, begin.