Courts delays Guantanamo case of Saudi who alleges torture

The chief war court judge here yielded Wednesday to an Obama administration request and postponed until next year the terror trial of a Saudi Arabian captive who claims he was subjected to a string of abuses in U.S. captivity. Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, set Jan. 11 for a hearing to decide which of the interrogations of Ahmed al Darbi, 34, would be heard by a military jury. Darbi's lawyer wants some 119 statements made by the captive excluded from any trial because, Darbi claims, U.S. forces got them through beatings, threats of rape, sleep and sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation. He was captured in Baku, Azerbaijan, and interrogated both at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo. Army criminal investigators subsequently took a victim's statement from Darbi here, and charged a Bagram guard who was ultimately cleared at a court martial. Pentagon prosecutors allege that Darbi plotted a never-realized 2001-2002 attack on an unnamed ship in the Strait of Hormuz. He also allegedly met Osama bin Laden and trained at an al Qaeda camp.