NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – A U.S. military jury debated the sentence on Friday for an admitted al Qaeda conspirator from Sudan who promised to help in the prosecution of other prisoners in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals.

Prisoner Noor Uthman Muhammed pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism. The jury at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base began deliberating his sentence on Friday.

The nine members of the military jury can send him to prison for 10 to 14 years in addition to the nine he has already been held. But his sealed plea deal is thought to cap the sentence at only a few years, and he would serve more only if he breaks his promise to cooperate in other prosecutions.

Noor’s case is the last one pending in the Guantanamo tribunals that have completed only six trials in nine years, but prosecutors expect to file more charges soon.

Much of this week’s sentencing hearing focused on laying the groundwork to prosecute a “high-value” Guantanamo prisoner Noor was captured with, Abu Zubaydah. The U.S. military calls him a terrorist facilitator who funneled recruits to al Qaeda training camps, then supplied them with money and forged passports as they left to carry out attacks.

“Noor is not a small piece of the puzzle, he’s a sliver,” said his defense lawyer, Marine Captain Christopher Kannady. “Very little of this evidence ever refers to or even mentions Noor.”

Noor, who is about 44, admitted he gave small-arms training at the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000 and sometimes filled in for the camp commander.

NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – A stash of how-to manuals for bombs, poisons and airplane hijackings was found in a Pakistan house where Guantanamo prisoner Noor Uthman Muhammed was captured, according to evidence presented on Thursday to a U.S. war crimes tribunal.

Noor, a Sudanese prisoner who goes by his first name, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

Military jurors at his sentencing hearing heard evidence on Thursday about the safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, where Noor was captured in 2002 with accused senior al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah.

Noor cooked and kept house for the group of men who had fled paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion. Prosecutors and defense lawyers stipulated that Noor did not know the scope or details of any al Qaeda attacks, but he admitted his actions made him a co-conspirator.

Items seized from the Faisalabad house included a notebook with a diagram of a timing circuit for detonating roadside bombs and manuals for making mustard gas and poisons.

Another manual instructed airplane hijackers to storm and break down the cockpit door, while colleagues turned the first-class cabin into “a holding and killing room” to dispose of the crew.

“The psychological impact of beheading is much deeper than killing by shooting,” the manual advised.

NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Guantanamo’s newest war criminal helped train a wave of al Qaeda operatives now doing time at America’s maximum-security prison in Colorado, a military prosecutor told a U.S. tribunal on Wednesday.

Sudanese prisoner Noor Uthman Mohammed pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism on Tuesday at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base.

A jury of nine U.S. military officers was chosen on Wednesday to deliberate his sentence. One of the prosecutors, Navy Lieutenant Commander Arthur L. Gaston III, said Noor deserved a lengthy one for his role as an arms instructor and logistics manager of the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan.

“Terrorists are not born, they are made. And the defendant in this case, Noor Uthman Mohammed, has made hundreds of them,” Gaston told the jurors in opening statements.

Noor, who is in his 40s and goes by his first name, admitted he studied at the al Qaeda-affiliated camp in 1996 and then taught there until it was shut down in 2000.

Gaston said the Khaldan alumni from that era include:

- Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, who was caught at the U.S.-Canada border in December 1999 with a trunk full of nitroglycerin and a plan to blow up the Los Angeles Airport on New Year’s Eve.

NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – A Sudanese prisoner held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay admitted he trained al Qaeda recruits and pleaded guilty on Tuesday to terrorism charges.

Defendant Noor Uthman Muhammed admitted to the war crimes tribunal that he was a weapons instructor and logistics manager at the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan, where some of the September 11 hijackers and other al Qaeda operatives trained.

He pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

Noor, as he asked the court to call him, could have faced life in prison if convicted at trial. His plea agreement, which was not disclosed, sets a shorter cap on his sentence on the condition that he cooperate in other prosecutions.

A man in his 40′s with a scraggly gray beard, Noor sat at a long reddish table in the high-security courtroom and listened through earphones to an English-Arabic interpreter.

He apparently cannot read — he signed Arabic translations of the plea documents with his thumbprint after his U.S. military and civilian lawyers explained the details.

Noor acknowledged he gave small-arms training to recruits from al Qaeda and affiliated groups and was deputy commander of the Khaldan camp from 1996 until it was shut down in 2000.

NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – A Sudanese prisoner linked to al Qaeda pleaded guilty on Tuesday to terrorism charges in the war crimes tribunal at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay.

Defendant Noor Uthman Muhammed was accused of being a weapons instructor and logistics manager at the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan, where some of the September 11 hijackers and other al Qaeda operatives trained. He pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

Noor, as he asked the court to call him, could have faced life in prison if convicted at trial. His plea agreement, which was not disclosed, sets a shorter cap on his sentence on the condition that he cooperate in other prosecutions.

Noor was a deputy commander of the Khaldan camp from 1996 until it was shut down in 2000, according to the charges against him. He was one of several Guantanamo prisoners captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March 2002, in a raid that netted accused senior al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah.

Noor’s age is not known. He is the third Guantanamo prisoner to plead guilty during the administration of President Barack Obama, who criticized the Guantanamo tribunals as a candidate, tweaked them as president and tried unsuccessfully to shut down the detention camp.

Three other prisoners were convicted during the administration of President George W. Bush, who set up the camp in 2002 to hold, interrogate and try foreign captives suspected of links to al Qaeda and their Taliban protectors in Afghanistan.

Noor’s plea resolves the last outstanding charges currently pending in the tribunals at the Guantanamo base, which has held nearly 800 captives and now holds 172.

MIAMI (Reuters) – The Afghan prisoner who died at the Guantanamo detention camp this week had quit the Taliban forces because he considered them corrupt, and he was never “in any way” an enemy of the United States, the man’s lawyer said on Friday.

Awal Malim Gul, 48, collapsed and died on Monday after using an exercise machine at the prison camp on the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. The U.S. military said the death appeared to have been from natural causes and autopsy results were pending.

In an announcement of the death, the U.S. military said Gul was a Taliban commander who operated an al Qaeda guest house and admitted providing operational aid to Osama bin Laden.

Gul’s lawyer, federal public defender Matthew Dodge, called those assertions “outrageous.”

“The government has never provided any evidence at all to support this slander. Neither Mr. Gul nor any credible witness has ever said such things,” said Dodge, who represented Gul in a U.S. district court case in Washington challenging his detention.

Gul was part of the U.S.-armed mujahideen forces fighting against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and continued to run a weapons depot after the Taliban took it over in 1996.

He told U.S. military officers at Guantanamo that he had seen bin Laden three times in Afghanistan during the 1990s but did not interact with him except to once shake his hand.

MIAMI (Reuters) – The Afghan prisoner who died at the Guantanamo detention camp this week had quit the Taliban forces because he considered them corrupt, and he was never “in any way” an enemy of the United States, the man’s lawyer said on Friday.

Awal Malim Gul, 48, collapsed and died on Monday after using an exercise machine at the prison camp on the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. The U.S. military said the death appeared to have been from natural causes and autopsy results were pending.

In an announcement of the death, the U.S. military said Gul was a Taliban commander who operated an al Qaeda guest house and admitted providing operational aid to Osama bin Laden.

Gul’s lawyer, federal public defender Matthew Dodge, called those assertions “outrageous.”

“The government has never provided any evidence at all to support this slander. Neither Mr. Gul nor any credible witness has ever said such things,” said Dodge, who represented Gul in a U.S. district court case in Washington challenging his detention.

Gul was part of the U.S.-armed mujahideen forces fighting against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s and continued to run a weapons depot after the Taliban took it over in 1996.

He told U.S. military officers at Guantanamo that he had seen bin Laden three times in Afghanistan during the 1990s but did not interact with him except to once shake his hand.

MIAMI (Reuters) – An Afghan prisoner collapsed and died at the Guantanamo detention center after working out on an exercise machine, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

Awal Malim Gul, who was accused of being a Taliban commander and al Qaeda associate, died at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base on Tuesday evening, the military’s Southern Command said.

Gul, 48, had been using an elliptical trainer, a stationary exercise machine used to simulate stair-climbing or running. A legal source said he collapsed while exercising but the military said he collapsed in the shower afterward.

“Other detainees in his cell block then assisted Gul to the guard station for medical attention,” the military said in a news release. “The guards immediately alerted medical personnel, who upon arriving at the cell block found him unresponsive.”

Gul was taken to the medical bay inside the camp where he lived and then transferred to the base hospital but could not be revived, the military said.

Gul had been held without charge at Guantanamo since October 2002. He is the seventh captive to die there since the detention center opened on the U.S. navy base in January 2002.

One other died of natural causes — colon cancer — and five died of apparent suicide.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier laughed at the notion he was a tyrant and claimed in a television interview on Tuesday that he had introduced democracy to his troubled homeland.

“I was the first person to start a process as such in Haiti, a democratic process, it was me who started it,” Duvalier said in an interview conducted by Alicia Ortega and broadcast by the Spanish-language Univision network.

Duvalier, 59, returned unexpectedly to Haiti last month after 25 years of exile in France. He now faces charges of corruption and crimes against humanity for the killings and torture that occurred during his 15-year rule.

He assumed power in 1971 upon the death of his widely feared father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who ruled Haiti with an iron fist and a secret police force known as the Tontons Macoutes.

Duvalier fled to France amid a popular uprising in 1986. He offered a startlingly different version of events during the interview, which was conducted in French.

“When they talk of me as a tyrant, they make me laugh, it gives me the impression that people suffer from amnesia, they’ve forgotten the way in which I left Haiti, how I left voluntarily,” Duvalier said. “There was no revolution at that time.”

Duvalier said his father was “an excellent teacher” who had trained him well to become the world’s youngest head of state at age 19. “He taught me a lot, I learned a great deal from him and, on his death, he left me excellent aides,” he said.

MIAMI, Jan 18 (Reuters) – About 38 percent of Florida’s early- and mid-season oranges and 12 percent of its late-season oranges had at least minor damage from a pair of December freezes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday.

Most fruit damage was minor, and the vast majority of the state’s orange trees escaped with no leaf damage at all, the USDA said.

The data reflect a special survey conducted last week. Florida’s $9 billion citrus fruit industry was hit with several days of below-freezing temperatures during two cold snaps in December.

Last week, the USDA cut its Florida orange crop forecast for the 2010-2011 season by 3 million boxes, to 140 million 90-pound boxes. That was down 2 percent from the Dec. 1 estimate, but still 5 percent larger than last year’s crop.

Juice traders said Tuesday’s damage estimate was higher than they expected. They estimated the USDA would cut the crop estimate by another 2 million to 4 million boxes in its next monthly forecast.

“I don’t think we priced that in,” said James Cordier, an analyst for brokers optionsellers.com in Florida. “We should test $1.80 (per lb).”

The key March frozen concentrated orange juice contract OJH1 closed Tuesday up 2.35 cents at $1.754 per lb.