Judge Allows Detainee’s Transfer to Harsher Prison

A war crimes tribunal judge decided Wednesday against second-guessing detention camp authorities in their decision to confine to maximum security and solitary confinement the 10 terrorism suspects who have been charged.

Navy Capt. Daniel O’Toole rejected a request by the Army defense lawyer for accused bomb maker Sufyian Barhoumi that his handicapped client be returned to the communal detention camp where he had been living until four weeks ago in recognition of his good behavior.

The defense lawyer, Capt. Wade Faulkner, had argued that the unexplained move of the 32-year-old Algerian to the harshest of the seven prison camps here had so upset Barhoumi that it undermined their lawyer-client relationship and had prevented them from preparing for trial.

Barhoumi’s case offered the first witness testimony in the 4-year-old tribunal.

Barhoumi lost most of his left hand to a mine explosion in Afghanistan in 1999, and because of that has had trouble using the sink and toilet in his Camp 5 cell. He had previously been in Camp 4, along with other cooperative inmates. There are 490 detainees scattered across the archipelago of prisons at Guantanamo Bay.

“There is a huge difference between Camp 4 and Camp 5,” Barhoumi told the tribunal, holding up his mangled left hand to show the scarred, blistered stump with only one finger.

He said the strong air-conditioning and limited time outdoors in Camp 5 had adversely affected his physical and psychological condition and had worsened the pain in his hand.

An official of the military joint task force that administers the prisons was the tribunal’s first witness. Court rules prohibit him from being identified by anything other than “Colonel B.” He said he was following Geneva Convention and Army regulations on the treatment of pretrial prisoners by holding them in closed, concrete cells at the maximum security Camp 5.

He conceded that Barhoumi and two other defendants moved at the same time might lament their lost freedom of movement and recreation time. But he said his first priority was to ensure that a detainee wasn’t exposed to harm by himself or by other prisoners.

“The real baseline for my whole motivation in everything is running a peaceful, safe and secure camp,” the colonel said. “I have to ensure his safety.”

The Navy lieutenant prosecuting Barhoumi agreed it would be risky to leave pretrial detainees in the medium security camp where they might be vulnerable to prisoners who feared they would provide testimony detrimental to their own interests.

“You don’t know that there’s a threat to the detainees in Camp 4 until he’s lying in a pool of blood,” warned the prosecutor, who also cannot be identified.

Colonel B said that since he had taken command of the detention group he had expanded the time a compliant Camp 5 inmate was allowed outdoors to exercise from 30 minutes to two hours. The 175 detainees housed at Camp 4 can play sports and commune with others for as much as 14 hours a day.

Barhoumi said he interpreted the move as punitive and an effort to discourage his cooperation.

“Camp 5 is known for being a punishment place. Everybody knows that,” said the tall, bearded defendant, who wore a wrinkled plaid shirt and blue pants.

“Don’t you see why he might be upset and perceive it as punishment?” Faulkner asked Colonel B, who saw it as a possibility with some prisoners and not with others.

The prison official said moving Barhoumi and two others also previously at Camp 4 was part of his plan for consolidating Guantanamo Bay prisoners into three main camps. The wire-mesh pens used as cells at Camps 2 and 3 are gradually being emptied. Two other sparsely populated camps, Echo and Iguana, are used for visits between lawyers and their clients and to house detainees pending their release.

One of the 10 charged detainees remains at a disciplinary unit at Camp 1.

Barhoumi showed no reaction to O’Toole’s ruling, which found no evidence that the transfer was punitive or damaging to his relationship with his lawyer. U.S. courts traditionally accord “wide-ranging deference” to corrections authorities in determining how best to detain prisoners ahead of trial, O’Toole said.

The chief defense lawyer, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, criticized what he said was another example of the tribunal officers’ “legal cherry-picking.”

Sullivan, other defense lawyers and human rights watchdogs have said the court set up by the Bush administration to prosecute suspected Al Qaeda figures refuses to consistently accord detainees rights assured by any recognized legal system, such as the Geneva Convention, the U.S. Constitution or the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Barhoumi was arrested with two Saudi detainees also appearing before the tribunal this week -- as well as with senior Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah -- in a March 28, 2002, raid in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Barhoumi, Jabran Said bin al Qahtani and Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi have been charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism by plotting to build remote-controlled bombs to attack U.S. forces that had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001.

Qahtani boycotted his initial hearing Tuesday after a brief appearance before O’Toole to condemn the United States as “the enemy of God” and to say he would rather be killed than cooperate.

Sharbi’s first court hearing is set for today, but he is reportedly refusing to cooperate with his military attorney.