Brian Bouffard, the lead counsel assigned by the US government for Mohammed Nazir Lep, said they were working on a number of issues for the ongoing trial, but the bottom line was that he wanted a fair trial as soon as possible.

“America knows very well how to give an accused a fair trial. We do it every day in our civilian courts and in military courts under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“I do not accept that we cannot do the same for the men in Guantanamo Bay.

“So we will never give up the fight for Nazir’s rights and dignity,” he said in an email response to FMT when asked about the progress of the trial involving Nazir and another Malaysian together with an Indonesian man.

“America should show the world that we aspire to be better than this.”

Nazir, together with Mohammed Farik Amin and Indonesian Encep Nurjaman, better known as Hambali, face eight terrorism charges.

They include seven related to twin bombings that killed 202 people in Bali in October 2002 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.

Meanwhile, Bouffard said the office of the US Military Commission has fixed the week of Feb 28-March 4 for the next hearing but he is not sure what the subject matter would be.

“We are not sure because our application for fresh arraignment after we sought to annul the first one held last August on the ground that the US government-assigned interpreters were incompetent, has been rejected. I expect this case to be a long haul,” he said.

Nazir had also said an Indonesian translator helping the prosecution was biased as he had stated last year that he did not know why the US government was wasting so much money on these terrorists and that they should have been killed a long time ago.