A Sudanese detainee at Guantanamo Bay agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to two terrorism charges in a pretrial agreement, the US Defence Department said, dpa reported.
Noor Uthman Muhammed, believed to be in his 40s, has been detained since 2002, when Pakistani security forces captured him and transferred him to US custody. He has been accused of helping to run a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan during the 1990s.
In 2009, he told the military commission handling his case that he was "not guilty" but entered no formal plea at the time. He faced life imprisonment under the original charges.
"In accordance with a pre-trial agreement, Muhammed admitted, in open court, to providing material support to terrorism and conspiring to provide material support to terrorism," the US Department of Defence said in an e-mailed statement.
The terms of the agreement were not revealed pending his sentencing hearing, which starts Wednesday.
Muhammed is the fourth Guantanamo detainee to enter a plea deal. In the most high profile case, "child soldier" Omar Khadr, a Canadian, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in January 2010 on murder and terrorism charges. But the plea agreement reduced his prison time to eight years, most of which could be served in Canada.
In August, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a Sudanese man who worked as a cook for al-Qaeda, was sentenced to 14 years. Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty in 2007 and was sent back to has native country to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He is now free.
At least one other detainee has been convicted. Ahmed Ghailani was sentenced last month by a New York federal judge to life in prison for his role in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Ghailani was the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court as part of President Barack Obama's plans to close the facility.
An estimated 170 detainees remain at Guantanamo, awaiting trial or transfer to countries that will accept them.
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