Iraqi at Guantanamo gets lawyer who invaded Iraq

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/iraqi-guantanamo-gets-lawyer-who-invaded-iraq

Iraqi at Guantanamo gets lawyer who invaded Iraq
By Carol Rosenberg, The Miami Herald
McClatchy/Tribune
© September 16, 2014

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba

An Iraqi prisoner accused of war crimes as commander of al-Qaida’s resistance of the U.S. military in invasion of Afghanistan in 2003 met for the first time Monday with the lawyer chosen by the Pentagon to defend him: a Marine lawyer who was part of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, in his 50s, sat in a white robe and turban separated from his new counsel, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Thomas Jasper, by a defense team translator. The alleged al-Qaida army commander didn’t object when the judge, Navy Capt. J. Kirk Waits, accepted Jasper’s credentials as lead defense lawyer, replacing an Army officer who had represented him at his June 18 arraignment.

Al-Hadi told the judge that he still wanted a civilian attorney to also work on his case. To which the judge replied that it would be up to his U.S. military attorneys to help line up that lawyer — at no expense to the U.S. taxpayers.

At the war court, only men accused of capital crimes can get a Pentagon-paid civilian attorney. Al-Hadi faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted of responsibility for a long string of attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2003 and 2004 that killed U.S., British, Canadian, German and Norwegian troops and a United Nations aid worker.