New twist in bizarre case of man who stole secrets

A man who is already serving 10 years in federal prison after admitting he stole military secrets is on trial in South Florida on allegations he used his position as a government contractor to “marry” underage girls in Honduras.

The bizarre case of Christopher Glenn took another strange turn on Monday when Glenn, who had said he planned to act as his own lawyer in the lengthy trial, balked at the last minute about representing himself in court.

Since the latest charges were filed in 2015, Glenn, who most recently lived with relatives in the 55-and-over Century Village community in West Palm Beach, has gone on a strange odyssey through the justice system.

Glenn, 36, born in Buffalo, N.Y., spoke in his native tongue, English, for all his court hearings in the military secrets case in federal court in West Palm Beach.

But when his new case was filed in federal court in Miami, Glenn said he preferred to communicate in Spanish and felt more comfortable using a Spanish interpreter in court.

In recent weeks, Glenn insisted on firing his assistant federal public defender and decided he wanted to represent himself in the child sex exploitation trial.

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola granted permission after

spending hours painstakingly explaining to Glenn what that could mean for the case.

Glenn rejected the judge’s attempts to get him to use his former public defender as a standby lawyer in case he changed his mind or couldn’t do it.

Instead, Glenn said he wanted a new private defense lawyer, paid by taxpayers to assist in cases like this. The judge appointed veteran defense lawyer Joseph Rosenbaum as standby counsel less than a month ago.

Then Glenn asked for a fellow inmate, currently imprisoned in Georgia, to be allowed to join his defense team. The judge rejected that request, ruling there is no constitutional right to be represented in court by a lay person.

In his order, the judge wrote the other inmate’s proposed “representation of the defendant in court would not further the orderly, fair, and efficient administration of justice.”

Though the judge had repeatedly warned Glenn that the case, which involves flying many witnesses from Honduras to Miami, would start Monday, Glenn made a last-minute bid to try to stop it.

“I’m not prepared to go to trial,” Glenn told the judge as opening statements were scheduled to start Monday morning.

He also told the judge that a computer hard drive and other evidence kept in his cell were damaged late last week. He said he believed it was done by prison workers at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami.

Glenn, who has been imprisoned in South Florida since he was arrested in February 2014, was dressed in a dark suit, silver gray tie and white shirt in court.

He spoke calmly in Spanish, using a low tone of voice and listening on a headset as an interpreter translated the proceedings into Spanish for him. An interpreter then translated Glenn’s words into English for everyone else in court.

Judge Scola told Glenn the trial was proceeding as planned and made arrangements to get other copies of the evidence for him.

He also gave him the option to continue representing himself or to have the standby lawyer, Rosenbaum, take over although Rosenbaum had not had much time to prepare for the complicated case.

“You have a constitutional right to not agree with me,” the judge told Glenn. “But nobody is responsible for this problem we’re in except yourself.”

The judge said Glenn was “playing games” with the court and ruled that Rosenbaum should take over handling the case. He said Glenn’s shenanigans on Monday morning “show more than ever, I think, he’s just orchestrating to sabotage” the case.

Prosecutor Vanessa Singh Johannes told the 15-member jury panel that Glenn used his position as a relatively wealthy U.S. citizen to sexually exploit underage girls from some of the poorest and most isolated areas of Honduras.

Glenn worked on contract at a U.S. military base in Soto Cano, Honduras, from December 2009 to December 2010 and again from February 2012 to October 2012, authorities said.

Glenn has pleaded not guilty to 10 federal charges of sexually assaulting minors, trafficking in minors for sex, traveling to Honduras to have sex with minors and possession of child pornography.

Prosecutors said he recruited several underage girls, ages 13 to 16, to either work as housekeepers for him or to be one of his wives. Glenn, whose lawyer said he is Muslim, has claimed he “married” some of the girls and had more than one wife at a time, court records show.

Prosecutors said Glenn drugged the girls, performed bogus intimate medical checks on them and offered some of them, and their families, paying jobs and other rewards, to force, obligate or induce them into having sex with them. Some of the girls and their family members were illiterate and lived in mud huts in isolated areas, investigators said.

Rosenbaum’s brief fiveminute opening statement on behalf of Glenn gave jurors a government conspiracy theory and a cliffhanger to ponder as they spend the next two or three weeks listening to the prosecution present its side of the case.

“The government wants to bury Christopher Glenn because of what he knows,” Rosenbaum told the jury. “They want him put away for a long time.”

The defense did not elaborate about what Glenn knows or the government’s possible motivation and jurors have not been told about Glenn’s prior military secrets conviction.

Rosenbaum told them Glenn’s father is an Iraqi Kurd who emigrated to El Salvador.

Glenn was born in upstate New York but spoke English, Spanish and Arabic from a young age, the lawyer said.

The lawyer said Glenn’s computer wizard and language skills made him very valuable and that he did contract work for the U.S. government as early as when he was 14 years old.

Glenn has worked all over the world, including in Chile, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Singapore, Costa Rica, Mexico and Honduras, Rosenbaum said.

“This case was manufactured ... by the U.S. government to silence him,” Rosenbaum said.

Glenn insists the girls were all of legal age, that he had parental consent to marry them and that the marriage ceremonies were conducted in accordance with the Muslim faith, Rosenbaum said. Glenn also says he possessed no child pornography and that a photo found on his electronic devices was of a woman of legal age, he said.

The FBI began investigating Glenn after he reported problems with his work computer and they began to unravel his alleged crimes after finding child pornography and other incriminating evidence on his computers, authorities said.

Records show Glenn was previously expelled from Camp Bucca in Iraq in 2009 after being accused of committing about $17,000 worth of fraud and hacking U.S. databases. Authorities said they decided not to prosecute because they said the loss was relatively small.

Glenn was later hired as a computer specialist who worked on contract for Harris Corp. and the Department of Defense.

It is unclear how Glenn got the Honduran job given his prior history. The company and government officials have declined to comment.

The trial is expected to last for several weeks.

Glenn