Ben Chacko
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THE trials of three men held without charge in Guantanamo Bay for 18 years are so flawed they should be scrapped or begun anew, defence lawyers say.
Indonesian militant leader Encep Nurjaman and two Malaysians were arraigned yesterday before a military commission on charges of murder, terrorism and conspiracy related to nightclub bombings in Bali in 2002.
Mr Nurjaman, known by his nom de guerre Hambali, was a leader of a group called Jemaah Islamiyah, a south-east Asian group linked to al-Qaida. Bombings they are accused of carrying out in Bali and Jakarta killed 213 people.
But the manner of their arrest and treatment in custody undermines the case against them, defence lawyers say. They were seized in Thailand in 2003 and transferred to CIA “black sites” where, according to a Senate intelligence committee report published in 2014, they were tortured.
In 2006 they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, the notorious extra-legal concentration camp established by the US on illegally occupied Cuban soil which became a prison for hundreds of people abducted around the world as part of the US’s “war on terror.”
Many, like British resident Shaker Aamer who was held without charge for 13 years before his release to Britain in 2015, were never charged with any offence. The US policy of offering bounties for terror suspects led to the abduction of large numbers of innocent people like Mr Aamer, who was “taken at random, for information he might have, not for any crime,” in the words of the chair of the campaign that eventually saw him freed, Joy Hurcombe, before being brutally beaten and tortured to extract confessions.
Christine Funk, representing Malaysian Mohammed Farik bin Amin, said she “didn’t see any evidence that he would get a fair trial” during the arraignment. The defence say that one Malaysian interpreter’s language skills are so poor that a defendant could not understand proceedings, and that an Indonesian interpreter is biased as he has been overheard disparaging the men as terrorists who should be killed.
US President Joe Biden has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay, a promise made previously by Barack Obama. It still holds 39 of the 779 inmates to have passed through its doors.
