Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
March 1, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
The Pentagon has decided to press forward with the trial of the brother-in-law of a 9/11 hijacker, announcing Friday that a Bush administration official has approved charges against a Saudi detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Ahmed al Darbi, 32, is accused of planning and procuring gear to attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz and off the Yemen coast in 2001 or 2002. The attack never happened.
Conviction of the crime at a military commission at Guantánamo could carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Pentagon officials say Darbi is the brother-in-law of a member of the suicide squad that overpowered the airline crew of Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Killed in the attack were 187 people, including the wife of then U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson.
Darbi is not accused in the 9/11 plot.
The kinship arose at a 2006 court martial in Fort Bliss, Texas, in which Darbi claimed by affidavit that guards brutalized him while he was in U.S. military custody in Bagram, Afghanistan, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in March 2003.
Darbi made a sworn deposition for a June 2006 court martial at Fort Bliss that ended in acquittal of a soldier accused of detainee abuse.
Darbi has a civilian defense lawyer, Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is challenging his detention in a federal appeals court in Washington D.C.
He also has been assigned a war court defense lawyer, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, who traveled to Guantánamo earlier this month to meet with Darbi and Dixon together.
Broyles and Dixon blamed the prison camps for refusing the joint meeting. The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, said the lawyers did not follow proper procedures and Darbi refused the meeting, anyway.
Darbi is also accused of ''providing material support for terrorism'' in the six-page charge sheet released by the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
Besides participating in the unrealized plot to attack unknown vessels, the charge sheet alleges he met with Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, trained at an al Qaeda's camp and also served as a camp weapons instructor.
March 1, 2008 By Carol Rosenberg
The Pentagon has decided to press forward with the trial of the brother-in-law of a 9/11 hijacker, announcing Friday that a Bush administration official has approved charges against a Saudi detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Ahmed al Darbi, 32, is accused of planning and procuring gear to attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz and off the Yemen coast in 2001 or 2002. The attack never happened.
Conviction of the crime at a military commission at Guantánamo could carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Pentagon officials say Darbi is the brother-in-law of a member of the suicide squad that overpowered the airline crew of Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Killed in the attack were 187 people, including the wife of then U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson.
Darbi is not accused in the 9/11 plot.
The kinship arose at a 2006 court martial in Fort Bliss, Texas, in which Darbi claimed by affidavit that guards brutalized him while he was in U.S. military custody in Bagram, Afghanistan, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in March 2003.
Darbi made a sworn deposition for a June 2006 court martial at Fort Bliss that ended in acquittal of a soldier accused of detainee abuse.
Darbi has a civilian defense lawyer, Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who is challenging his detention in a federal appeals court in Washington D.C.
He also has been assigned a war court defense lawyer, Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, who traveled to Guantánamo earlier this month to meet with Darbi and Dixon together.
Broyles and Dixon blamed the prison camps for refusing the joint meeting. The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt, said the lawyers did not follow proper procedures and Darbi refused the meeting, anyway.
Darbi is also accused of ''providing material support for terrorism'' in the six-page charge sheet released by the Pentagon Friday afternoon.
Besides participating in the unrealized plot to attack unknown vessels, the charge sheet alleges he met with Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, trained at an al Qaeda's camp and also served as a camp weapons instructor.