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Pending court ruling hangs over Guantanamo case

An Afghan prisoner accused of participating in a grenade attack on a car full of civilians in Afghanistan went before a US military tribunal at the Guantanamo naval base on Tuesday as participants awaited a US Supreme Court ruling on the tribunal system's legitimacy.

Abdul Zahir made his first appearance on charges of conspiring to commit war crimes, aiding the enemy and attacking civilians. He deferred entering a plea at the pre-trial hearing.

However, courtroom rules in military trials of terrorist suspects came into question.

Zahir's US military defense counsel almost immediately began asking the judge, Marine Colonel Robert Chester, what laws he would follow in presiding over the trial.

Chester, wearing a black robe over his green uniform shirt, refused to be pinned down by the defense on the rules for the trial.

"Obviously military law is going to have some application," Chester said. "I suppose we will look at military criminal law and federal criminal laws and procedures."

Pressed by the defense attorney, Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bogar, Chester would not identify what set of laws would guide the trial, saying: "I'm not going to speculate as to what is or what is not controlling."

The chief military prosecutor, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, told a news conference later that the judge can choose from several standards of law "to provide a full and fair trial."

Chester seemed perplexed that Zahir had been given copies of the charges in English, Arabic and Pashto but not in his native Farsi, and ordered prosecutors to get him a copy in that language.

The Pentagon office organizing the hearing also inexplicably failed to send a Farsi translator. The court had to borrow a translator the defense attorney had brought to help him converse privately with Zahir.

The Guantanamo tribunals are the first convened by the US military since World War II. They are holding pretrial hearings this week for four prisoners at the naval base in southeastern Cuba.

The US Supreme Court heard a challenge to the tribunals' legitimacy last month and is expected to rule in June or July on whether they can proceed.

Chester said he had read news accounts and legal briefs from the case and indicated that he would comply with whatever the court ordered.

The tribunals, formally called commissions, were in hiatus for all of last year but have convened three times so far this year, and three more sessions are scheduled through July.

The charges say Zahir was an al-Qaeda paymaster who served as a Taliban translator and was part of a group that conducted a grenade attack on a car carrying three journalists near Gardez, Afghanistan, in 2002.

Davis said Zahir himself did not throw the grenade, which seriously injured Canadian journalist Kathleen Kenna, a correspondent for the Toronto Star at the time.

Zahir is one of 10 Guantanamo prisoners charged before the military tribunal. He faces life in prison if convicted.
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