Guantanamo Bay Detainee To Stand Trial

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AHN)-- Six years after hundreds of suspected terrorists were detained at Guantanamo Bay trials are to begin.

However, The New York Times reports that Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamden, who could be one of the first tried, is seemingly unfit to stand trial due to insanity.

Hamden is accused of being a driver of Obama Bin Laden and of transporting weapons for Al Qaeda, as well as helping Bin Laden elude capture after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Hamden, like many of the detainees, has been kept in an 8-foot-by-12-foot cell for 22 hours a day. He has had two phone calls to his family. No visits are allowed at the prison camp. There is also no TV or radio. Critics have long maintained that there are human rights abuses happening to the detainees, including solitary confinement, forced nasal feedings for hunger strikers, and virtually no time outdoors.

The Pentagon maintains that there is no solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay, but rather humane solitary cells. They say the detainees can talk to each other through slits in the cell doors.

Military officials say that lawyers are being manipulated by the detained terrorists. Attorneys say that the military is diminishing the problem for public relations reasons.

Now, with the trials beginning, the mental state of the detainees will be an issue the courts will have to assess before the suspected terrorists can stand trial.

The New York Times quoted Clive Stafford Smith, attorney for 35 detainees as saying, "The issue of mistreatment of prisoners, the miserable lives they live in these cells, will come up in every case."

Trials are set to begin next month.