GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba, 27 August 2004 — A Yemeni poet accused of crafting terrorist propaganda asked to represent himself yesterday before a US military commission, but the panel said it was not allowed.

Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman Al Bahlul, 33, of Yemen, is charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes. He appeared with his head shaved, wearing tan pants and a gray polo shirt.

When asked if he had any questions, he said through an Arabic interpreter: “Am I allowed to represent myself?”

The presiding officer, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback, said the order setting up military commissions does not allow for it.

The hearings are the first step to military commissions, or trials, to be heard by a five-member military panel — the first such proceedings since World War II.

Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur, 34-year-old Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, declined to enter a plea in the first hearing Tuesday. David Hicks, a 29-year-old Australian cowboy accused of fighting with Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban regime, pleaded innocent Wednesday.

Al Bahlul is accused of being a “key Al-Qaeda propagandist who produced videos glorifying the murder of Americans to recruit, inspire and motivate other Al-Qaeda members” to attack the United States and other countries.

Because of a government delay in approving clearance for a translator, however, defense attorney Navy Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel said he hasn’t had time to prepare for yesterday’s hearing as challenges to the fairness of the proceedings continued to mount.

Horrible Translation at Hearings

The US military yesterday promised to reopen special tribunals deciding the status of Guantanamo Bay war on terror detainees where translation mistakes have been made.

Military authorities admitted mistakes have been made after two Arabic television journalists watching Combatant Status Review Tribunals noticed what they called glaring mistakes in translations of statements made by a Saudi inmate.

Mohammed Alami, a correspondent for the Al-Jazeera television network, said that when the detainee explained he went to Afghanistan for training but wanted to go on to Chechnya “it came out as ‘he went to Afghanistan for training but wanted to go on to join some kind of cult.’”

Nadia Charters of the Al Arabiya network said she had “shocked” by the standard of the translation.

When the Northern Alliance, a coalition of Afghan opposition groups was mentioned, it was translated as “the United States or the United States and its allies,” Alami added.

More serious, the journalists added, was when the Saudi was asked whether he went to Afghanistan for training before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. According to Alami and Charters, he was asked if he had left Afghanistan before or after the attacks.

“The questions have a completely different meaning and consequence for the detainee,” said Alami.

A military spokesman told journalists “when questions occur as to the translation, the tribunal will be reconvened with another translator.”

The spokesman added: “We are committed to showing that the process is fair” and added that there was an established process for certifying translators.

The journalists said they were told that mistakes made during the Saudi’s hearing had been corrected.

Each of the 585 detainees at the detention camp for Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects at Guantanamo Bay will go before the status review tribunals which will decide whether they were fairly declared ‘enemy combatants’.

More than 30 review tribunals have been heard and the authorities announced last weekend that the first 14 cases decided had all ruled that the inmate was an enemy combatant who would not immediately qualify for release.