A US military plea deal with a Pakistani Guantanamo detainee will cap at 25 years the term to be served by the 31-year-old, court documents show.
In exchange, Majid Khan Shoukat said he would testify against his fellow prisoners accused of terrorist attacks.
Khan has agreed to plead guilty at a military tribunal to be held yesterday to charges that he participated in terrorist plots along with accused Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The US government released the 37-page plea bargain document publicly on Tuesday on the Web site of the military commission that is prosecuting the detainees.
Many of the terms of the plea agreement remain classified.
The military plans to delay Khan’s sentencing until Feb. 29, 2016, to see whether he complies with his agreement to testify against other detainees, according to a report in the Washington Post.
Khan is a former US resident who attended high school in Baltimore, Maryland, where his parents ran a gas station.
If he meets the conditions of the plea bargain, he would get a reduced sentence, a legal advisor to the military tribunal said. He could also be transferred to his native Pakistan, where he has a wife and child.
According to a court document, on Feb. 13 “the accused signed and provided an offer for pretrial agreement to the Convening Authority seeking to resolve this case via guilty plea. On 15 February 2012, the Convening Authority accepted the offer and entered into the [plea bargain agreement].”
The Convening Authority refers to the Pentagon legal official who oversees the trials.
Military officers on a jury could sentence Khan to 25 years to 40 years in prison.
However, the plea bargain says the Convening Authority would agree to impose no more than a 25-year sentence on him. He could also choose a lesser sentence for the detainee.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
RSS