WASHINGTON - An Air Force translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison for
terrorism suspects will go before a court-martial on 20 charges in
the continuing probe of possible espionage at the facility.

Ten other charges against Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi were
dropped, and the general who referred the case to a court-martial
decided the military will not seek the death penalty, Air Force
officials said in a statement late Thursday. The date for the
proceeding has not been set.

Al-Halabi, who worked for nine months at the military's prison in
Cuba, faces the most serious charges among three who officials say
they have arrested since July in the probe of alleged security
breaches.

Al-Halabi had said that he is innocent. One of his lawyers, Air Force
Maj. James Key III, has said the Syrian-born al-Halabi is a
naturalized U.S. citizen and a patriotic American.

The military alleges he gave classified information to people from
Syria and Qatar about the prison housing some 660 suspects, mostly
reported to be from the al-Qaida terrorist network, former Taliban
regime of Afghanistan and other terrorist organizations.

He was arrested July 23 at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in
Florida and being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The charges against al-Halabi include seven counts alleging that he
failed to obey a lawful order; one that he aided the enemy; four
alleging he committed espionage; five that he made false statements
to investigators; two that he possessed sensitive documents; and one
that he lied on credit applications.

Others from Guantanamo who have been charged are Muslim chaplain
Capt. James Yee, who also has used the first name Yousef. Officials
have charged him with two counts of mishandling classified
information. The 35-year-old chaplain is being held at a Navy brig in
Charleston, S.C.

A civilian interpreter, Ahmad F. Mehalba, was arrested in late
September in Boston while returning to the United States from his
native Egypt. He's charged with lying to federal agents by denying
computer discs he was carrying had classified information from
Guantanamo on them. Mehalba also has pleaded innocent.
Fri, Nov. 07, 2003

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the courts.

If they don't accept a plea bargain then they will all be found guilty. Afterall, they are under the UCMJ ... :(

As for the 'prisoners' being illegally held by our government in Cuba ... how many years do you think we will 'detain' them without giving them due process or even charging them ... we put ourself between a rock and a hard place ... we can't charge them as they haven't broken any laws ... and we can't let them go home without 'loosing face' ... but who cares about the poor guys ... they are all just terrorists ... or at least that is what our government would like us to believe.

Reality ... most of them were very low ranking common soldiers who became POWs their 'crime' is defending their country against an invading Army ... that just happened to be the U.S. Army ... and these guys lost. How do you think our government would react if it were American's soldiers being held in a forgien nation in violation of international law.

A Sad situation ...

When I first heard of this story, somehow I really didnt believe it. Our government has lied to us so many times regarding this war on terrorism, how do we know when they are telling the truth?

THE JUSTICES AGREED to rule on whether U.S. courts had the power to consider challenges by a group of Afghan war detainees to their continued confinement without access to families or lawyers and with no charges brought against them.
The court will hear an hour of arguments in March, with a ruling due by July, in a pair of cases that could decide the judiciary’s role to review certain government’s actions in the war on terror.
The justices said in a written order that they would decide whether U.S. “courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.”
The high court agreed to hear appeals by two British, two Australian and 12 Kuwaiti nationals. They are among about 660 detainees from more than 40 nations at the base in Cuba after their capture during the war in Afghanistan.
The detainees were seized during the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The first detainees arrived at Guantanamo in January 2002. U.S. officials defended the government’s policies.
“We believe that the law is on our side,” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told a Fox television affiliate in Atlanta. “We’ve always said with the detainees that they are being treated consistently with international law and we believe that we’re right in this.”
Solicitor General Theodore Olson said the detainees could not invoke U.S. court jurisdiction to challenge their detention, and he warned of the potential for judicial interference “with the core war powers of the president.”

‘HUMAN RIGHTS SCANDAL’
Human rights groups welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision, however.
“The treatment of the Guantanamo detainees is a human rights scandal which violates international law and damages U.S. claims to uphold the rule of law,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “We hope that the Supreme Court will bring an end to the legal black hole into which the Guantanamo detainees have been thrown and ensure justice for them and their families.” Elisa Massimino of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights said, “The justices should use these cases to assert that the Guantanamo detainees have legal rights and a means to seek enforcement of those rights.”
A federal judge dismissed the lawsuits on the grounds that the military base was outside U.S. sovereign territory and that writs of habeas corpus were unavailable to foreign nationals outside U.S. territory. A U.S. appeals court agreed. Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the British and the Australians, said the case involved an important issue. “One of the most fundamental democratic principles is at risk in this case: whether the government may detain people without charge and deny them the right to test the legality of their detention in open court,” he said. “The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law,” lawyers for those detainees told the Supreme Court in one appeal. In the other appeal, for the Kuwaitis, lawyers said the case raised “questions that test the character of our standing in the world community.” A group of former U.S. federal judges, diplomats, military officials and human rights advocates all supported the appeals and urged the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Wait a minute! Before you go throwing America under the bus lets take a look at one of the most fair and balanced systems in the world! Go anywhere else in the world and these guys would even have the hope of a trial because they would already be dead! You think that these guys that were muslims and were serving in the military should have thought to htemselves "maybe I better watch my P's and Q's?" What were they doing walking around with classified information on CD's? Who were they talking too in Qatar? I spent 6 years in the military and they don't go searching to make people targets for no good reason. The people I saw got busted for stuff surely deserved the punishment they got and a whole lot more for being stupid and dishonorable. There is no dsoubt that there are truths that we don't know and some maybe we are better off not knowing but in this case these guys were up to something that was very questionable to say the least.


When I first heard of this story, somehow I really didnt believe it. Our government has lied to us so many times regarding this war on terrorism, how do we know when they are telling the truth?

If they don't accept a plea bargain then they will all be found guilty. Afterall, they are under the UCMJ ... :(



I do not know if you are in the military or are related to someone who is or if you work for the military, but I have worked for the Department of Defense and my oldest son is a Special Forces Officer and he has spent the better part of the last 3 1/2 years in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq and I take great offense at what you said. Have you ever been to an Article 32 hearing or a Courts Martial? A person has a much better chance of coming out innocent there than in any court in this land, in the so called criminal justice system. The UCMJ is followed much more judiciously than any state penal code or the Constitituton has ever been. If you are going by things you have read in the newspaper or seen on television, then you are at a great disadvantage as to having heard the truth about any of this and I would just ask that you do a little research before you pass judgment on the military justice system.

I mean you no ill will and this is just my opinion but I stand strongly behind our military and their justice system -- these guys are just following orders of their President and the officers appointed above them.

Val