In a hybrid federal-military US court in Cuba, a prosecutor has proposed a March 2025 trial date for three men accused of conspiring in the 2002 Bali bombings.
He also pledged to present the military judge with all proposed national security evidence in the case in the next nine months.Credit:Defence lawyers protested the timeline as too long for the three men – an Indonesian and two Malaysians – who have been held by the United States since 2003. They asked the judge to require prosecutors to explain ongoing negotiations with the CIA and other intelligence agencies about the evidence.
The defendants were captured in Thailand in 2003 and spent more than three years in the secret CIA prison network, where, according to their lawyers, they were tortured. They were taken to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. Monday was their first return to the courtroom since a two-day arraignment in August 2021.At the back of the courtroom, in a spectators’ chamber, guests of the prosecution taped photos of four men into four empty front-row seats, apparently representing victims of the Bali bombing.
Separately, the judge declined to excuse an interpreter who had previously remarked that the US government was “wasting so much money on these terrorists. They should have been killed a long time ago.” Instead, the judge cautioned the interpreters – who were working from a remote location – that he expected their translations to be “neutral, sanitised, surgical”.
A judge compares the revisions to the original evidence and, if he decides they are inadequate, returns them to prosecutors, to essentially do better. Kraehe said the government should present all evidence and substitutions for the judge’s review by January 31.But he said March 2025 was the earliest practical date to start a trial.
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