Technical glitch delays Guantanamo hearing

CUBA: The next court appearance of five men charged over the 9/11 attacks has been delayed until Thursday due to an Internet outage, the presiding judge said Tuesday.

The preliminary hearings at a US military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had already been pushed back so that the accused could observe the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and were due to run from Wednesday through August 28. But the Internet failure prompted defense attorneys to ask Judge James Pohl for more time to prepare, and the motion to delay was granted.

The hearings will now begin on Thursday, the judge said in his ruling.

The outage was caused by the derailment of a freight train in the suburbs of Baltimore, near the US capital, which damaged fiber optic lines carrying Internet data from the US naval base in Cuba, a US military spokesman said.

All communications from Guantanamo Bay are first transmitted by satellite to the continental US and then via fiber optic lines. The lawyers for the accused hope to raise the issue of the alleged torture of their clients -- and the US government's refusal to let them discuss the details. AFP