A military judge will decide whether a Sudanese detainee who says he has undergone "various methods of interrogation" since 2002 can use an Arabic-speaking psychologist with experience in post-traumatic stress disorder to help him prepare for trial.Arguing Wednesday before military judge Navy Capt. Moira Modzelewski, attorneys for Noor Uthman Mohammed said the psychological assistance is critical to evaluate statements Noor has made that the government plans to use against him. Prosecutors accuse Noor of running a terrorist training camp in eastern Afghanistan. "Without developing the defense we really will not have an opportunity for a fair trial," said defense attorney Navy Cmdr. Katharine Doxakis.
Noor was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 along with a dozen or more captives who were rounded up at the same time as a better known detainee now held here, Zayn al-Abdeen Mohammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubayda.
Declassified documents say Abu Zubayda has told interrogators that the Khalden training camp that Noor allegedly ran was a rival to training camps run and sanctioned by bin Laden, wasn't associated with al-Qaeda, that it was first set up by the U.S.-backed resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was committed to a defensive, not offensive, jihad. At least one of the people arrested on that day, former Russian Army ballet dancer Ravil Mingazov, was ordered released after a U.S. district judge in Washington ruled that the Pentagon had no evidence to hold him.
Doxakis argued that Jess Ghannam, a clinical professor of psychiatry and global health sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, would help the defense determine whether 17 statements attributed to Noor were reliable and given voluntarily.
| Wonder what the good Dr. Ghannam will determine? |
| Professor Dr. Ghannam is active in good works in the Gaza Strip, according to Wikipedia, and in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and advocating for the Palestinian right to return effort here at home. That's indicative of his approach... |
Ghannam thinks that there's a "great possibility" that Noor - who wasn't in court Wednesday - suffers from PTSD or depression. Prosecutors, however, said Noor has said he wasn't "tortured or mistreated" while in U.S. custody and quoted him as saying he was "surprised that Americans have been so kind to him and treated him so well."
| That's why he's so stressed ... |
| Particularly this expert ... |
The court quickly dispatched another issue in the case: whether an Army reserve officer, Maj. Amy Fitzgibbons, would be permitted to continue to defend Noor. Fitzgibbons, Noor's first Pentagon-appointed defense lawyer, is now based at Fort Lewis, Wash., and has asked to continue representing Noor, but her Army colonel supervisor rejected her request.
Fitzgibbons told the judge that her new supervisor has agreed that she could stay on the case as long as the Office of Military Commissions paid for her travel. "It's nice to have the whole team back for this hearing," Modzelewski said.
Noor is one of five Guantanamo prisoners whose trials before a military commission Attorney General Eric Holder authorized in November, but there's little likelihood that he'll be tried soon. In April, Modzelewski said it would take her until January or February to sift through classified evidence the prosecution intends to use against him and that the trial couldn't begin before she'd done that.