A Guantánamo detainee accused of being an accessory to deadly terrorist attacks in Indonesia two decades ago has separated his military commission case from that of his two co-defendants, indicating the possibility of a plea deal.
The detainee, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, a Malaysian man, is no longer being tried alongside the other two suspects. The charges against them include murder, terrorism, and conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, as well as the 2003 Marriott hotel bombing in Jakarta that killed 11 people.
The court filing did not disclose whether a plea deal had been reached. It also did not mention if Mr. Bin Amin had agreed to testify against his co-defendants, the potential sentence he would receive, or the location of his imprisonment. Both Christine Funk, Mr. Bin Amin’s defense lawyer, and Col. George Kraehe, a prosecutor on the case, declined to comment.
During the Obama administration, there was almost a plea deal in which Mr. Bin Amin would have been repatriated to Malaysia to serve most of his sentence. However, the deal fell through due to concerns that he might not remain incarcerated for the entire term, partly because Malaysia might not recognize the legitimacy of the tribunals system.
If Mr. Bin Amin is convicted through a guilty plea, it would align with the military commissions system’s strategy of resolving charges against detainees formerly held at secret C.I.A. prisons, known as black sites. These cases are complex due to the prisoners’ torture by the agency before being transferred to military custody, as well as the presence of classified information.
To date, no former C.I.A. detainee has been convicted at trial before a military commission. However, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was brought to the United States for a civilian trial, where he was convicted in a mixed verdict and sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa. Nevertheless, Congress has prohibited the transfer of any more Guantánamo detainees to the United States for federal court trials.
In 2012, another former C.I.A. detainee, Majid Shoukat Khan, pleaded guilty before a military commission at Guantánamo and was released in Belize earlier this year. Last year, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, another such detainee, pleaded guilty before a commission and is expected to be sentenced next year.
The flagship cases before the military tribunal at Guantánamo have been mired in pretrial proceedings for over a decade. These include five former C.I.A. detainees accused of aiding the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and a former C.I.A. detainee accused of conspiring in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole off the coast of Yemen in October 2000.
In March 2022, prosecutors in the September 11 case invited the defendants’ lawyers to negotiate a potential plea deal, which would have resulted in a maximum punishment of life imprisonment…
2023-09-01 17:37:47
Article from www.nytimes.com
rnrn