A plea deal could be close for a defendant in the Bali bombing at Guantanamo

The case of a Guantanamo detainee indicted by a military commission for terrorist attacks in Indonesia twenty years ago is no longer joined to that of two other defendants.

A Guantanamo detainee accused of being an accomplice to deadly terrorist attacks in Indonesia twenty years ago has separated his case before the military commission from that of his two co-defendants, a decision that suggests a plea deal could be pending.

The detainee, a Malaysian man named Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, is no longer on trial along with two other suspects in the case, according to a court filing released this week. They are charged with murder, terrorism and conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, and the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, which killed 11 people.

The court filing did not indicate whether a plea deal was reached and, if so, whether Mr. Bin Amin accepted to testify against his co-defendants, what sentence he would receive and where he would serve it. Christine Funk, Mr. Bin Amin's defense attorney, and Col. George Kraehe, the prosecutor handling the case, each declined to comment.

At the end of the Obama administration, the government nearly struck a plea deal with Mr. Bin Amin that he would be flown back to Malaysia to serve most of his sentence. But the deal fell through amid fears he might not stay in jail for his full sentence, in part because Malaysia might not recognize the legitimacy of the justice system.

None former CIA officer has not been identified. This detainee was found guilty in a trial before a military commission, although one of them, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was brought to the United States for a civil trial, found guilty in a mixed verdict and sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for his role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa. But Congress has banned bringing other Guantanamo detainees to the United States for trial in federal court.

In 2012, another former Guantanamo CIA. detainee Majid Shoukat Khan pleaded guilty before a military commission at Guantánamo; it was released in Belize earlier this year. Last year, another detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, pleaded guilty before a commission and is expected to be sentenced next year.

The flagship cases brought before the military The Guantanamo court has been bogged down in pre-trial proceedings for more than a decade. Among them are five former CIA agents. detainees accused of having contributed to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and...