Hearing for accused 9/11 plotters halted
after infiltration charge
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[February 10, 2015]
By Tom Ramstack
FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - A U.S.
military judge on Monday halted a pre-trial hearing for Guantanamo Bay
inmates accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks after one of the
accused said his interpreter had worked at a secret CIA prison.
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The allegation by Ramzi Binalshibh, a 42-year-old Yemeni, adds to
contentions by the defense that the U.S. government is attempting to
infiltrate its team.
The Arabic interpreter is part of the defense team for the five
detainees charged in the 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000
people in the United States. Binalshibh said he recognized the
interpreter, Louay Al-Nazer, from his time in a secret Central
Intelligence Agency "black site."
“The problem is I cannot trust him because he was working at the
black site with the CIA and we know him from there,” Binalshibh said
in English.
Army Colonel Judge James Pohl halted the hearing in the slow-moving
case to await motions from the attorneys on how to handle the latest
infiltration allegations.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Feb/10/images/ads/current/gives_you_more_bch_040314.png) A second detainee also identified the interpreter as being present
at a secret prison. The hearing at the Guantanamo Bay military
prison in Cuba was the first in the case since the December release
of a U.S. Senate committee report detailing torture methods used
under a secret U.S. detention and interrogation program.
Defense attorneys claimed in April that Federal Bureau of
Investigation agents bugged rooms where they met with clients. They
also said agents questioned support staff about the defense
attorneys and investigated at least one of the lawyers.
Pohl then stopped the hearing and ordered a Justice Department
investigation. Monday's hearing was a resumption of the April
hearing.
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It was intended to focus on whether Binalshibh should be tried
separately to let the proceedings against the other defendants
continue. His defense team appears to have been a main FBI target.
Anne FitzGerald, an Amnesty International observer at the Guantanamo
hearing, said that if the allegations about the interpreter were
true his presence was "deeply unsettling."
"The defense teams should be able to interview him as a likely
witness to torture and enforced disappearance," she said in a
statement.
Binalshibh has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than eight
years. The hearing was monitored by media over a closed-circuit
broadcast at Fort Meade.
(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Eric
Walsh)
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