Gitmo Translator Gets Day In Court
While some of the most serious charges against the Arabic translator accused of spying at the Guantanamo Bay have been dropped, he still faces court-martial for charges including espionage counts.
Proceedings against Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi were scheduled to begin Tuesday morning at Travis Air Force Base, military officials said.
U.S. Air Force officials last month dropped some of the most serious charges, but al-Halabi still faces 17 of the 30 charges filed following his arrest in July after nine months at the Cuba prison.
They include espionage counts, disobeying an order, making false official statements, mishandling classified documents and lying on a credit application.
The Air Force hasn't said why it dropped the single count that carries the death penalty — a charge of "aiding the enemy." Also dropped were counts dealing with e-mailing information about Guantanamo detainees and transmitting information to unauthorized recipients.
His civilian lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said last month that "the gut of the case was gone." He could not be reached for comment Monday.
Al-Halabi was expected to appear in person to hear the charges outlined against him, but was not expected to enter a plea.
CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer reports al-Halabi, who was born in Syria, was headed for his homeland to get married when he was arrested in July, the first of four Guantanamo Bay workers arrested in an investigation into alleged security breakdowns.
Most charges were also dropped against a former Muslim chaplain at the prison, Army Capt. James Yee, who has pleaded innocent to charges of mishandling classified information, disobeying orders, committing adultery and storing pornography on his military computer.
A civilian interpreter, Ahmad F. Mehalba, pleaded innocent to charges of lying to federal agents by denying that computer discs he was carrying had classified information from Guantanamo.
On Nov. 29, Col. Jack Farr, an Army Reserve intelligence officer on six-month assignment to Guantanamo Bay, was charged with transporting secret documents without proper containers and with lying to investigators.
"The Supreme Court has rejected one case of detainees against the administration but will hear two — the cases on the Guantanamo detainees as well as the one regarding enemy combatants in the U.S., setting the stage for a challenge to the President's terror authority," said CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk, who was at the Guantanamo base this past summer. "It is in this 'showdown' atmosphere that the Administration is bringing the military trials."