GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- In one of the longest appearances before tribunals evaluating some 585 terror suspects, a prisoner admitted Monday that he was a Taliban bodyguard but said he did it only to feed his family.
Gesticulating with his shackled right hand to stress points, the 37-year-old Afghan pleaded for about an hour before the members of his tribunal closed the session to review classified material.
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"I joined the Taliban to make a living for my family," the slight, bearded man said in a prepared statement read by his Pashto interpreter. "I wasn't a big leader in the Taliban."
The U.S. military says the man -- held at Guantanamo Bay for more than 2 1/2 years -- not only fought for the Taliban on the front lines, but also served in 2000 as an acting Taliban governor in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
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