Commander of Afghan Insurgency Pleads Responsible at Guantánamo Bay

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — An Iraqi prisoner who commanded insurgents in the course of the U.S. warfare in Afghanistan pleaded responsible on Monday to warfare crimes prices associated to deadly assaults on allied troopers in 2003 and 2004, in a deal that might hand him off to the custody of one other nation by 2024.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, now in his 60s, spent a lot of the daylong listening to responding, “Sure, your honor,” to the questions of the navy choose, Lt. Col. Mark F. Rosenow, a few secret account of his actions in Afghanistan as a co-conspirator with Osama bin Laden and different prime Qaeda leaders between 1996 and 2003. The account included greater than 100 gadgets.

He may very well be sentenced to 10 years in jail, a lot of it to be served within the custody of one other nation, below a plea settlement that has but to be made public.

He pleaded responsible to the normal warfare crimes of attacking protected property — a U.S. navy medevac helicopter that insurgents who answered to him didn’t shoot down in Afghanistan in 2003 — and of treachery and conspiracy related to rebel bombings that killed no less than three allied troops, one every from Canada, Britain and Germany.

These allied troopers had been killed by automotive bombs or suicide bombers posing as civilians, the choose stated. If Mr. Hadi had identified prematurely in regards to the plans, he had an obligation to cease them. If he had possessed no prior data, the choose stated, Mr. Hadi had an obligation to punish the perpetrators.

However the plea deal nonetheless represented a drastic scaling again of the federal government’s prices towards him. Not one of the crimes to which he pleaded responsible made him straight or not directly answerable for a few of the most severe allegations made by navy prosecutors after they charged him in 2014.

Gone from his case had been allegations that he was a part of the sweeping Qaeda conspiracy to rid the Arabian Peninsula of non-Muslims. Nor was there any declare of accountability or data of the Sept. 11 assaults, which prompted the creation of the Guantánamo jail and the warfare court docket.

Not one of the prices held him answerable for the destruction by the Taliban of monumental Buddha statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage web site, in March 2001. Nor did the fees tie him to the 2003 assassination by insurgents of a French employee for the United Nations aid company.

Mr. Hadi, who says his actual identify is Nashwan al-Tamir, was captured in Turkey in 2006 and delivered to Guantánamo Bay the following yr. Efforts to convey him to trial have been slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and by his well being. He has a degenerative spinal illness that has left him paralyzed at occasions.

Plea talks within the case began this yr below a brand new Biden-era push to shut the Guantánamo jail, which has an getting older detainee inhabitants and restricted capability to offer well being care with out airlifting in specialists and tools.

Beneath Mr. Hadi’s plea settlement, which was reached in Could and refined over the weekend, a navy jury will hear the proof towards him and be requested to decide on inside a spread of 25 to 30 years of confinement, beginning along with his plea.

As soon as that’s carried out, in keeping with the deal, the senior Pentagon official answerable for overseeing the warfare court docket will scale back it to 10 years.

The settlement postpones sentencing for 2 years, offering time his legal professionals hope will likely be ample to discover a sympathetic nation to obtain him and supply him with lifelong medical care. His spinal illness has required 5 operations in lower than a yr at Guantánamo and has left him counting on a wheelchair and walker — and in want of extra surgical procedure to deal with his periodic paralysis.

“He pleaded responsible for his position as a frontline commander in Afghanistan,” stated his lawyer, Susan Hensler, who’s compensated by the Pentagon. “He has been in custody for 16 years, together with the six months he spent in a C.I.A. black web site. We hope the US makes good on its promise to switch him as quickly as doable for the medical care he desperately wants.”