A military jury at Guantanamo Bay on Friday sentenced two prisoners to 23 years in prison for their roles in the 2002 terrorist attack that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia. But the men could be released by 2029 under a secret agreement and with a sentence.
Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, have been held by the United States since the summer of 2003, initially for three years in CIA prisons where they were tortured. They pleaded guilty to war crimes last week.
About a dozen relatives of tourists killed in the attacks spent an emotional week in court, testifying of their ongoing grief. A jury of five U.S. military officers, assembled to decide on a sentence in the range of 20 to 25 years, returned after deliberating for about two hours on Friday after 23 years.
But unbeknownst to the jury, a senior Pentagon official secretly reached an agreement with the defendants over the summer that they would be sentenced to a maximum of six additional years in prison. In exchange for the reduced sentence, they had to provide testimony that could be used in the trial of an Indonesian prisoner named Hambali, who is accused of masterminding the Bali bombing and other attacks as the leader of the al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah group.
Subsequently, the judge, Lt. Col. Wesley A. Braun, reduced Mr. Bin Amin’s sentence by 311 days and Mr. Bin Lep’s by 379 days because prosecutors had missed court deadlines for handing over evidence to defense attorneys while preparing their case .
But the men could go home earlier. “The pre-trial agreement provides for the possibility of repatriation before the sentence is completed,” said Brian Bouffard, Mr. Bin Lep’s lawyer.
It took so long for the men to come to trial in part because of the time they spent in the CIA’s secret foreign prison network, where prisoners were tortured during interrogation. Even after they agreed to plead guilty to their crimes and cooperate with prosecutors, the legacy of torture cast a shadow over the proceedings.
Christine A. Funk, a defense attorney, projected drawings of Mr. Bin Amin depicting his torture on a courtroom screen, describing him as a broken man who was cooperating with authorities at the time of his arrest in Thailand. In addition to his three years in the CIA’s intelligence community, he spent the first 10 years in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay, she said.
“Upon arrival at the black sites, he was immediately tortured,” she said. “Not immediately interrogated. Tortured immediately.”
She pointed to federal and congressional investigations that confirmed he was held naked and isolated in painful bound positions, had water poured down his nose and throat and was forced to squat with a broom behind his knees. Each situation was illustrated by a drawing, which is now used as evidence.
“This is, quite frankly, un-American,” she said. “We are not. But that’s exactly what we did.”
Chief prosecutor Col. George C. Kraehe said the real victims of torture were the families of the dead, “who were horrified throughout their lives, terrorized, deprived of precious loved ones and deprived of them by the barbaric acts of the defendants.”
“Our task here is not to bring justice to the accused,” said Colonel Krähe. “Our job here is to bring justice to the victims.”
He defended the CIA’s interrogation program as a product of the time, “at the beginning of the War on Terror, when the United States was trying to defend itself and the world from forces that had brutally attacked the United States and killed thousands of innocents.” ” that had attacked other countries, forces that sought to destroy the American way of life. This war continues to this day.”
Additionally, the defendants “got out of this program about 18 years ago,” he said.
Mr. Bin Lep was also tortured, Mr. Bouffard said. But he has decided to forgive those who did it and move on.
Both defense and prosecution lawyers gave jurors a lesson in war crimes conspiracy, saying the men became complicit in the Bali bombing by training with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan before the attacks and by training with the perpetrators afterward helped to evade capture.
Mr. Bin Lep “may not have planned the bombings, may not have carried them out, may not have known when and where,” Bouffard said. “But he helped the people who did it.”
The military commission’s chief defense attorney, Brig. Gen. Jackie L. Thompson Jr., issued a statement lamenting how long it took to bring the men to justice. He said the U.S. decision after 9/11 to establish the CIA interrogation program “destroyed everyone’s desire for accountability and justice.”
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2024-01-27 03:44:03
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