WASHINGTON — A army decide on Tuesday indefinitely postponed the arraignment of three prisoners at Guantánamo Bay who have been scheduled to make t
WASHINGTON — A army decide on Tuesday indefinitely postponed the arraignment of three prisoners at Guantánamo Bay who have been scheduled to make their first courtroom look in 17 years of detention, discovering that the coronavirus pandemic made it too dangerous to journey to the Navy base.
The Indonesian prisoner often called Hambali, who has been held since 2003 as a former chief of a Southeast Asian extremist group, and two accused accomplices have been scheduled to seem on the warfare courtroom on Feb. 22. However Col. Charles L. Pritchard Jr., the army decide who was to journey to Guantánamo this week, dominated that “the varied counsels’ perception that their well being is at important danger by touring” to the bottom was affordable.
Colonel Pritchard is the newest army decide to affix the Guantánamo army commissions bench, and the most recent to postpone a continuing as too dangerous in almost a 12 months of cancellations over the coronavirus. Pretrial hearings within the death-penalty case towards 5 males accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults have been delayed for a 12 months.
The decide, courtroom personnel and attorneys certain for the listening to started a quarantine within the Washington space over the weekend earlier than a constitution flight to the bottom on Thursday.
As soon as there, the passengers have been to be individually quarantined for 14 days underneath a plan devised by prosecutors to guard these dwelling on the bottom of 6,00zero residents and on the jail from the specter of an infection.
“The danger to the well being and security of members within the arraignments because of the international Covid-19 pandemic is excessive,” the decide wrote in a seven-page order dated Tuesday. “The federal government’s proposed danger mitigation measures decrease the chance, however the danger nonetheless persists.” He steered that touring to the bottom may not be secure till summer time’s finish.
The case had been dormant all through the Trump administration, however on the second day of the Biden administration, a senior Pentagon official appointed underneath the Trump administration who had been put accountable for the army commissions permitted the prosecutions.
The defendants embrace Mr. Hambali, who’s charged as Encep Nurjaman and is the previous chief of the extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, and his accused accomplices, Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep and Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, who’re Malaysian.
The three males have been captured in Thailand in 2003 and are charged with conspiring within the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202 individuals, and the 2003 Marriott Resort bombing in Jakarta, which killed a minimum of 11 individuals and wounded a minimum of 80. They spent their first three years within the C.I.A.’s secret prisoner community earlier than they have been transferred to Guantánamo for trial in 2006.
The army commissions guidelines require a detainee be delivered to courtroom inside 30 days of the approval of costs however the decide’s ruling appeared to droop that clock.
Colonel Pritchard, who’s chief of the Military’s southeastern courtroom circuit, needed to journey to Washington final week to quarantine earlier than touring to Guantánamo. He famous in his ruling that most individuals touring to the arraignments haven’t but been vaccinated towards the virus, and neither have the prisoners.
He additionally famous Saturday’s determination by the Biden administration to droop a plan to supply vaccines this week to the 40 detainees on the jail. Below the preliminary plan, the three defendants may have voluntarily obtained their photographs on Feb. 1 and their boosters in time for his or her Feb. 22 courtroom date.
On Tuesday, the army declined to say how lots of the 1,500 troopers and different service members who work on the jail operation had been provided vaccines, and what number of had obtained a shot. Navy medical personnel have been vaccinating volunteers among the many base’s residents in phases since Jan. 9.
This week, underneath the phased program, schoolteachers and overseas staff on the base commissary and bars have been provided the vaccines, as have been Marine forces who guard the perimeter of the bottom.
Prosecutors had proposed suspending the listening to to April 3. The decide wrote that he’ll difficulty a brand new arraignment order “sooner or later.”