Mohammed Nazir Lep said the Indonesian translator had stated last year that “I don’t know why the government is wasting so much money on these terrorists; they should have been killed a long time ago”.
A motion posted on the website of the US Military Commission’s office said the “real and apparent bias prevented her from functioning as a true, accurate and impartial voice of the court”.
Nazir, together with another Malaysian Mohammed Farik Amin and Indonesian Encep Nurjaman, who is more commonly known as Hambali, refused to enter a plea when they were arraigned on Aug 30-31, citing incompetence of the translators which resulted in inaccurate translations.
Nazir’s lead counsel Brian Bouffard said in the motion that Nazir could not reliably understand the court proceedings in his native language (Malay) and had to switch to listening to Indonesian, “a language he only somewhat understands”.
Bouffard said the US government had not secured a competent Malay translator “despite the extraordinary amount of time the government has had to prepare for the prosecution of this case”.
He said Nazir had been under arrest for 18 years and had been asking for a speedy trial.
Bouffard said the US government had finally admitted that Nazir’s lack of comprehension in any language other than Malay may have misled US authorities into believing he was being deceptive.
“This resulted in him being brutally tortured and interrogated in the so-called ‘black sites’,” said Bouffard.
Bouffard argued that Nazir’s arraignment was fatally defective and must be conducted again, and correctly.
When contacted, Bouffard told FMT that the commission has not made a decision on the application yet.
“We believe the attempted arraignment was defective and improper, because neither the commission nor the US government seem to care all that much whether Mr Nazir and his co-accused can even understand the words spoken in the courtroom.
“We have not yet received a ruling on our request for a lawful arraignment,” he said in an email response.
All three suspects, who were referred to as “alien unprivileged enemy belligerents” more than a dozen times in the affidavits, face eight charges including seven related to twin bombings that killed 202 people in Bali in October 2002 – Indonesia’s deadliest terror attack to date – and a bombing at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta in August 2003.
The eight charges are conspiracy, murder, attempted murder, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, terrorism, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, and destruction of property.
All three men were arrested in Thailand in 2003 and sent to secret CIA-operated “black sites” before being moved to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2006.