GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba - An Al Qaeda suspect told a US military tribunal that he had fought against the United States and said on Thursday he was willing to spend the rest of his life in prison as a “matter of honor.” | We can arrange that. |
Sporting long dark hair and a beard, Sharbi appeared at a pretrial tribunal hearing near the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “I fought the United States,” Sharbi told the hearing’s presiding officer, Navy Capt. Daniel O’Toole. “I’m going to make it short and easy for you guys: I’m proud of what I did and there isn’t any reason of hiding.”
But Sharbi eschewed the notion that he was “guilty” of wrongdoing and politely said he wanted to represent himself at the tribunal. He firmly rejected his appointed military defense lawyer, Navy Lt. William Kuebler, and said he wanted neither a military replacement nor a civilian defender. “It’s the same circus, different clown,” said Sharbi, a fluent English speaker who earned an electrical engineering degree at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona before leaving the United States for Afghanistan in 2000.
OÂ’Toole tried to order Kuebler to remain SharbiÂ’s lawyer, citing the detaineeÂ’s ignorance of military judicial rules. But Kuebler told the presiding officer that state legal authorities in California had advised him it would be unethical to represent an unwilling client. OÂ’Toole then cut short the proceedings and set a May 17 hearing to consider the ethics issues raised by Kuebler.
| What ethical issue? He says he did it. Case closed. Next! |
Military documents allege that Sharbi was introduced to bin Laden in July 2001 at Al QaedaÂ’s al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic training, stood guard and kept watch for US air strikes after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He was moved by former Al Qaeda operations director Abu Zubaydah to a safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, for training in the construction of electronic detonators later used in car bomb attacks on US forces in Afghanistan, the military says. Sharbi, Barhoumi, Qahtani and Zubaydah were captured there together in March 2002, military documents say.