Pentagon shipping jumbo cell to Guantánamo so terror suspect can go on trial from hospital bed
The Pentagon is shipping a handicapped-accessible cell big enough to accommodate a hospital bed and wheelchair that, in a first, would let a war-crimes suspect live at the court during proceedings as he tries to recover from multiple spinal surgeries.
The Camp Justice sleepover plan represents a reversal in Guantánamo detention-center policy, which required that a defendant be returned each night from court to a section of the detention center called Camp 7, the top-secret prison for former CIA captives. But the cascading health crises since the summer of 2017 of a 57-year-old inmate called Abd al Hadi al Iraqi have thwarted the efforts of two successive Marine Corps judges to bring him to trial.
On Friday, prosecutor Marine Maj. Johnathan Rudy announced the plan to add an extra-large holding cell with a video feed and phone line to the court. That means Hadi could watch the proceedings from a cell with a hospital bed adjacent to the courtroom if he feels too unwell to sit in court. He could telephone his attorneys if he wants to talk to them.
Prison-guard commander Army Col. Steven G. Yamashita testified Friday that the cell will arrive in Guantánamo in March.
“He will be able to get wheelchair in there. His hospital bed will be in there. It will have the toilet in there with the sink. You know, if it doesn’t have the appropriate handrails or grab rails, we’ll have those installed. So, yes, it should, his it will accommodate him.”
Hadi, a Iraqi Army conscript in the 1980s, is accused of commanding and paying insurgents who attacked U.S. and allied forces, as well as civilian-aid workers, in the post 9/11 invasion of Afghanistan. Captured in Turkey in 2006, he got to Guantánamo in April 2007 and was charged in June 2014. He could face a life sentence if he’s convicted.
Hadi, who says his true name is Nashwan al Tamir, arrived at Guantánamo with degenerative-disc disease, according to his lawyers. His condition worsened in U.S. military custody. He became incontinent in his cell in September 2017. With a hurricane headed to this outpost in the Caribbean, the Pentagon scrambled a neurosurgery team to treat him. Four other surgical procedures followed, the last in May 2018.
In court last week, Hadi sat stiffly in a cushioned rehabilitation chair, wearing a white prison uniform, skullcap atop his head, and no-skid hospital socks on his feet. He stood rarely and, when he did, used a fourwheeled walker to transfer himself to a standard wheelchair for Army guards to roll him in and out of court.
Occasionally, Hadi has refused to come to court, citing excruciating back spasms and other related pain, and refused to sign a document waiving his attendance — something other war-court judges have required to hold legal arguments or take testimony in a defendant’s absence.
The expanded cell space would allow a prisoner, for the first time, to spend nights at the court compound called Camp Justice — something that a guardforce commander opposed in another military-commissions case as a logistical and security hardship. Yamashita’s predecessor testified at a secret hearing on Dec. 16, 2016 about the impossibility of letting another former CIA captive — USS Cole bombing suspect Abd al Rahim al Nashiri — spend nights at the court complex, invoking concerns about staffing, quality of life, and security.
According to testimony in the Hadi trial, the Iraqi captive takes Percocet and Valium as needed to deal with back pain and muscle spasms that cause his body to seize up and his face to contort. One lasted about an hour in a court session, after which he was taken by ambulance to an acute-care unit — abruptly ending a November hearing.
His neurosurgeon testified anonymously last week that the captive has healed from the surgery but continues to have pain and back spasms that might never go away. For one hearing, the prison rolled a hospital bed into the courtroom and after a corpsman gave Hadi pain killers for a back spasm, the captive became so drowsy that guards ushered the public out of the spectators’ gallery, dimmed the courtroom lights, and let him sleep it off in an extended recess. Hadi’s lawyers said he found lying in the bed with spectators watching degrading. So the prison wheeled in a privacy screen.
The new cell is part of a multiphase Camp Justice expansion that could cost up to $19 million. A war-court spokesman was unable to estimate the cost of the cell.
Carol Rosenberg: 305-376-3179, @carolrosenberg