Translation woes stall Saudi's Guantanamo hearing

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, April 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. war crimes court at Guantanamo reconvened on Wednesday over the case of a Saudi Arabian prisoner accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up ships, but the hearing was halted due to translation problems that have plagued the process.

The defendant, Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, understood the proceedings well enough to tell the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, that he believed the court in a U.S. naval base in a remote part of Cuba was illegal.

"I believe there is no international court or local court in the United States that treats detainees or accused people the same way we are treated here," al Darbi said through an Arabic-English translator.

He called the tribunal "a crime against humanity, a crime against the law and a crime that defies any kind of justice."

Pohl tried to question al Darbi on whether he wanted a U.S. military or civilian lawyer but the exchange was difficult to follow because the translators' voices competed with the judge's.

The translators worked in a booth outside the courtroom and their voices were broadcast simultaneously via earphones so the defendant could listen in Arabic and into the courtroom so his answers could be repeated in English.

The lawyers, the defendant and the court reporter could not keep up, so Pohl recessed the hearing until the problems could be fixed.

Translation issues have interrupted the hearings since 2004, when the U.S. military first convened the special court to try foreign captives on terrorism charges at the naval base, rather than in the regular U.S. civilian or military courts.

The Bush administration considers the 280 Guantanamo prisoners to be unlawful enemy combatants undeserving of the legal protections granted to soldiers and civilians under international law. Rights groups have severely criticized the detention camp and the tribunals as a travesty of justice.

FITS AND STARTS

The trials have moved in fits and starts amid myriad legal challenges and the whole system had to be recreated after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the first version as illegal in 2006.

Charges have been brought against 15 prisoners under the revised system, including six who could be executed if convicted on charges of direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Fourteen of the 15 cases are still pending.

The only one to be resolved was that of an English-speaking Australian youth who avoided trial by pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism. That defendant, David Hicks, finished his nine-month sentence in his homeland.

Al Darbi is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. He faces life in prison if convicted.

He is accused of training and teaching at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

The charges also allege that in 2001 and 2002, al Darbi traveled around the Middle East shopping for boats, global positioning devices and crew members as part of a plot to use explosives-laden vessels to attack a ship off the coast of Yemen or in the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. The plot was never carried out.

Al Darbi is not accused in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States but is the brother-in-law of Khalid al Mihdar, one of the hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on that day, killing 187 people. (Editing by Michael Christie and John O'Callaghan)