2 Malaysians to remain in ‘tough’ Guantanamo Bay, despite conviction

 

Malaysians Nazir Lep (left) and Farik Amin have been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre since their arrest in 2003.

PETALING JAYA: The two Malaysians who were sentenced to jail last month by a US military court in Cuba after pleading guilty to conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings will not be transferred to a normal prison for safety reasons.

Brian Bouffard, the lawyer for one of the convicted Malaysians, Nazir Lep, said the pair would instead remain at the US-operated Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

The high-profile detention centre was set up in 2002 to detain terrorist suspects after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York a year earlier.

Nazir, 47, and Farik Amin, 48, had been held in solitary confinement since their arrest by US authorities in Thailand in 2003 in connection with the Bali bombings the previous year.

Last month, they were sentenced to 23 years in prison by a jury after pleading guilty to their role in the bombings under a pre-trial agreement.

As per the agreement, they can be released after five years and possibly repatriated to a third country. But Bouffard said there had been no indication of when this would happen as the decision would be made by the US government.

“They will have to remain in Guantanamo Bay to finish the rest of their sentence or until they are repatriated to a third country. Nazir and Farik will be able to be housed together. But they will both be sequestered away from pretrial or uncharged detainees as per US law.

“The general thinking behind the move not to transfer them to a normal prison is for their safety, based on what they were convicted of,” he told FMT.

Bouffard also said the jury had not recommended any clemency for the duo, though it was allowed by the court during sentencing.

In 2002, then US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld said Guantanamo Bay was established to detain extraordinarily dangerous people, interrogate alleged militants and terrorist suspects in an optimal setting, and prosecute detainees for war crimes.

As of December 2023, 30 detainees remained at Guantanamo Bay. Besides the two Malaysians, the others are from Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Palestine, Iraq, Tunisia and Kenya.

In 2007, US presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would close down the detention centre as he had faith in the US courts’ ability to “deal with the terrorists”.

He served two terms as US president but the Guantanamo detention centre still exists. - FMT