The government dropped espionage charges yesterday against a Syrian-born translator at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the third time in recent months that investigators have withdrawn security-related charges against a serviceman at the detention facility for suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. In an agreement with military prosecutors, Senior Airman Ahmad Halabi, who once faced 30 charges of spying and aiding the enemy that potentially carried the death penalty, pleaded guilty to four less serious charges. The court-martial of Halabi, an Air Force supply clerk who served for eight months as an Arabic translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison, had been set to begin this week at Travis Air Force Base in California.
Halabi was arrested in July 2003 at a Navy base in Florida as he was traveling to Syria to be married after his Guantanamo Bay assignment. Federal agents found hundreds of documents in his bags, including 180 letters on his laptop computer that previously had been sent by detainees to their families. Other documents included a list of detainees' names and a map of the prison. The government contended that Halabi, who was born in Syria and moved to Detroit as a teenager, planned to reveal the documents to unspecified "enemies" during his trip. He was initially charged with 30 counts, including espionage and aiding the enemy, but over time the government dropped about half those accusations. He spent more than nine months in jail before being allowed to resume his job as a supply clerk at the base outside Sacramento last May. The case was marred by irregularities. While searching Halabi's possessions, a rookie Air Force investigator drank beer and failed to wear gloves as he opened a box of documents, testimony showed. Then he repacked the box and put on gloves before videotaping his reopening of the box.
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