Saudi pleads guilty to terror charges at Guantánamo

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: The Miami Herald

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A long-held Saudi captive pleaded guilty Thursday to terror charges for serving as a personal shopper for al-Qaida militants plotting attacks on ships in the Arabian Sea.

Ahmad al Darbi, 39, appeared in court in a button-down shirt and tie for the proceedings, which traded an undisclosed sentence at Guantánamo in exchange for return to his native Saudi Arabia. His attorney, Ramzi Kassem, announced that Darbi pleaded guilty to all the non-capital charges. They include terrorism, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects and hazarding a vessel.

In 2002, according to his charge sheet, Darbi bought navigational equipment and some vessels, mostly in the United Arab Emirates. They were intended to be used in an attack on a civilian oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz in an al-Qaida campaign to damage the global economy.

Some of those resources ended up being used in an attack off Yemen on a Malaysia-bound, French-flagged oil tanker, the Limburg, on Oct. 6, 2002 — four after Darbi’s capture. A Bulgarian crew member, Atanas Atanasov, 39, was killed.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/20/3948206/saudi-pleads-guilty-to-terror.html

[gopiscrap]

1. How coerced was the plea?

[happyslug]

3. No Coercion, he is to be sentence to ten years, which he has already served....

Thus be released next week, if not sooner. This is the problem for holding prisoners without trials the deal offered is a sentence for time served. If the prisoner refuses, they promise to keep him in jail till he agrees. Technically that is NOT Coercion, but a plea bargain.

[Maedhros]

4. Confess or continue to be incarcerated?

I get what your saying, but to me that's coercion.

[rafeh1]

6. when you have a criminal justice system

when you have a criminal justice system you will get criminal justice.

Innocent until you run out of money (or time in this case) strikes again

I propose we change our criminal justice system to a justice system.. Why on earth would we refer to our justice system as criminal unless it is criminal.

[gopiscrap]

5. sounds a lot like coercion to me

[happyslug]

7. According to the law it is not, just Plea Bargaining.

People have complained about such Coercion for decades, but the courts have ruled it is not Coercion,

[gopiscrap]

8. Intellectually I understand that