First war crimes trial since WW II to begin at Guantanamo

[Mustafa al-Muhaajir]

First war crimes trial since WW II to begin at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A special military trial was to get underway Monday at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, with a former driver for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden facing the first US war-crimes tribunal since the end of World War II.

Salim Hamdan, from Yemen, is the first "enemy combatant" from the US "war on terror" to face a full-scale trial since the prison camp at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was opened in late 2001.

And with a federal judge rebuffing the last-ditch attempt by Hamdan's lawyers to halt the trial, the landmark case is now set to open Monday after preliminary hearings over the past week.

Hamdan, whose trial is expected to last two weeks, faces charges of "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism," and could receive life imprisonment if convicted.

Australian national David Hicks was to face a military trial in 2007 but pleaded guilty at a hearing before it began.

After being held without trial for five years, Hicks admitted to providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal that allowed him to return to his country where he served the remainder of his sentence.

The Pentagon is withholding the identities of the 13-member jury pool brought to Guantanamo over the weekend, but all are US military officers.

The administration of President George W. Bush set up the special military commissions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The military commissions were invalidated in 2006 by the Supreme Court, only to be restored a few months later by the US Congress.

They have since been struck by a series of legal battles and hitches -- including a June Supreme Court decision that granted foreign terror suspects captured abroad the right to challenge their detention in US courts -- that have pushed back the opening of Hamdan's lawsuit, and perhaps others to come.

The indictment against Hamdan, who is about 40 years old, alleges that he met bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1996 and "ultimately became a bodyguard and personal driver" for the Al-Qaeda leader.

It alleges that Hamdan received training in the use of rifles, handguns and machine guns in an Al-Qaeda camp and also "delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to Al-Qaeda members and associates."

Hamdan was transferred in 2002 to Guantanamo -- where he has been spent much of his detention in isolation -- and ordered tried by a military tribunal.

His lawyers called for the suspension of the trial following the Supreme Court's June decision allowing the roughly 260 Guantanamo inmates to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

But last Thursday, Judge James Robertson of the Federal District Court in Washington rejected the motion for an injunction.

In a brief ruling, Robertson said it was not up to him to stop the trial even before it started, but that the defense team was free to file an appeal in a civilian federal court after a verdict is reached in the case.

Hamdan's lawyers have already announced they would appeal.

Hamdan's case will be an important test of the military commission system. Of the 260 detainees currently in Guantanamo, only around 20 have been charged with a crime and the government plans to put only 60 to 80 of them on trial.

Several other Guantanamo inmates are also facing trial in Guantanamo including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani origin who is considered the mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.


http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gKTz-6GJ0o6JDO9hlNL0yLjHZGVg

[ummafnaan]

Australian national David Hicks
Does anyone know how true the stroy is regarding David Hicks' riddah? I heard he openly stated to fellow prisoners that he had left Islam while he was at Guantanamo Bay.

Allahu musta'an

[morbius]

You should change the title to "First American war crimes trial since WW II to begin at Guantanamo".

They sure picked a spot where to hold it :rolleyes:

[Mustafa al-Muhaajir]

Bin Laden's driver pleads not guilty in Guantanamo trial

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, pleaded not guilty on Monday at the opening of the first trial before a special "war on terror" military tribunal at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said.

"The trial has started and he pleaded not guilty," Cynthia Smith, spokeswoman for the US Defense Department, told AFP.

Hamdan, from Yemen, is the first "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo to face a full-scale trial before the special tribunals since the prison camp at the remote naval base opened in late 2001.

Hamdan, whose trial is expected to last two weeks, faces charges of "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism," and could receive life imprisonment if convicted by a jury of military officers.

In a new courtroom built for the proceedings at the naval base not far from the prison, lawyers, journalists and human rights monitors are watching a trial that is seen as a test of the controversial tribunal system.

President George W. Bush's administration set up the special military commissions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, saying terror suspects could not be adequately prosecuted in regular courts.

But the military commissions were declared illegal in 2006 by the Supreme Court, only to be restored a few months later by the US Congress.

The commissions have faced a series of legal battles and hitches -- including a June 2008 Supreme Court decision that granted foreign terror suspects captured abroad the right to challenge their detention in US courts -- that have pushed back the opening of Hamdan's lawsuit, and perhaps others to come.

Australian national David Hicks was to face a trial in Guantanamo in 2007 but pleaded guilty at a hearing before it began.

After being held without trial for five years, Hicks admitted to providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal that allowed him to return to his country where he served the remainder of his sentence.

The indictment against Hamdan, who is about 40 years old, alleges that he met bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1996 and "ultimately became a bodyguard and personal driver" for the Al-Qaeda leader.

It alleges that Hamdan received training in the use of rifles, hand guns and machine guns in an Al-Qaeda camp and also "delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to Al-Qaeda members and associates."

Hamdan was transferred in 2002 to Guantanamo -- where he has been spent much of his detention in isolation -- and ordered tried by a military tribunal.

Lawyers for Hamdan say he is not implicated in any terrorist activity even though he served as the Al-Qaeda mastermind's driver.

They also argue that he was mistreated while in US custody and was subjected to sleep deprivation, including being awakened every hour by guards during a 50-day period in 2003.

The Bush administration has faced heated criticism from human rights groups for detaining prisoners for years at Guantanamo without giving them the right to defend themselves in court.

Of the 260 detainees currently in Guantanamo, only around 20 have been charged with a crime and the government plans to put only 60 to 80 of them on trial.

As the trial got underway, Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on lawmakers -- and not federal judges -- to resolve legal questions left open by the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June that affirmed Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US courts.

If Congress fails to act, federal courts might end up issuing conflicting rules for the more than 200 pending cases for detainees, Mukasey said.


http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gk8pwmaYvxbRj4r8_RxchUobZA1g

[Mustafa al-Muhaajir]

Hamdan: Guantanamo's Mystery Man

Salim Hamdan had spent two years a as a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay when he first met Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, his Pentagon-appointed Navy defense lawyer. At the meeting, Swift suggested the possibility of suing President Bush on his behalf.

"This lawsuit, will it make you rich?" Hamdan asked after a long pause.

"No, but it might make me famous," Swift answered. "It might make you famous, too," he said.

"I don't want to be famous," Hamdan replied. "I just want to get out here."

Four and a half years later, Hamdan is still on Guantanamo, but Swift's prediction has proved correct. Hamdan is certainly famous. Not only was this Yemeni man, a former driver for Osama bin Laden with a fourth-grade education, at the center of what is perhaps the Supreme Court's most important decision on presidential power ever, he is now the first defendant in America's first war-crimes trials since World War II. Hamdan, in his late 30s, stands accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

And yet despite landing in the center of a historic legal drama, Hamdan remains largely unknown to the American public. His story is still shrouded in mystery. It remains unclear whether he was a dedicated lieutenant of bin Laden's — "a body man for bin Laden," as one of the government's lawyers once described him to me — or, as his defense lawyers will claim, little more than a lowly foot soldier. I've been following Hamdan's story since early 2004, when I started writing a book about his case, and have spent hundreds of hours interviewing his lawyers, his family, his mentor and his interrogator. From these conversations I have been able to assemble a portrait of Hamdan's extraordinary journey from the deserts of Yemen to an al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan to the dock of the U.S. military tribunal he entered this week. Like few other cases, his story sheds light on how the Bush Administration has prosecuted the war on terrorism since 9/11, and where it might be heading now.

Hamdan's journey began in 1996, when he first met Nasser al-Bahri outside a mosque in Sana, the capital city of Yemen. At the time, al-Bahri, a well-educated Saudi and veteran holy warrior, was assembling a small army of jihadis to fight alongside Tajikistan's small Islamic insurgency against its Russian-backed government. Hamdan was by all accounts an easy convert. Orphaned at a young age, he found a father figure in the confident and committed al-Bahri, and a purpose in jihad.

Al-Bahri ultimately managed to recruit 35 men, mostly Yemenis like Hamdan, but they were stopped in Afghanistan before they could make it to Tajikistan. What happened next would change Hamdan's life forever. At loose ends and casting about for a cause, one of the jihadis suggested that they go see a man named Osama bin Laden. Hamdan's group soon found their way to bin Laden, arriving at his camp in the caves of Tora Bora only days before Ramadan, the holiest time of the year. For three days they listened to bin Laden preach about the religious imperative of reversing America's presence in the Persian Gulf and of changing the approach to fighting Islam's enemies. "He said we must carry out painful attacks on the United States until it becomes like an agitated bull, and when the bull comes to our region he won't be familiar with the land but we will," al-Bahri told me.

Seventeen of the original 35 jihadis decided to stay. Hamdan was one of them. With only a fourth grade education, Hamdan made himself useful as a mechanic and driver. He ultimately ended up serving bin Laden himself as a chauffeur and bodyguard, following the sheikh when he relocated for security reasons to Tarnak Farms, a walled al Qaeda compound 30 minutes outside Kandahar. According to both al-Bahri and FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, Hamdan had bin Laden's trust but was not a member of his inner-circle. Both men describe Hamdan as deferential, eager to please. Their accounts differ, though, when it comes to Hamdan's level of involvement with al Qaeda. Al-Bahri characterized him as a circumstantial participant, someone with limited options who just needed a job, while Soufan said he was undeniably part of the al Qaeda conspiracy, pointing out that Hamdan swore a bayat, or oath of loyalty, to bin Laden.

In the days leading up to 9/11, Hamdan joined a small motorcade of al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who drove into the mountains above Khost to watch the hijacked planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on satellite TV. Hamdan was also at bin Laden's side — as a driver — in the weeks that followed, while the motorcade moved from one guesthouse to the next as bin Laden and Zawahiri readied their remaining fighters for America's imminent invasion.

In late November, with U.S. forces sweeping across Afghanistan, Hamdan returned to his home in Kandahar, one of the last Taliban strongholds, for his young daughter and pregnant wife, and drove them toward Pakistan. What happened next forms a central source of dispute between Hamdan and the government. According to his defense lawyers, Hamdan figured that he would be arrested if he tried to cross the border, so he instead dropped off his family and was planning to return the car, which he had borrowed, before finding a different way into Pakistan. Soufan and government prosecutors say that Hamdan remained in Afghanistan to fight alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban. Their account is corroborated by the fact that the Northern Alliance forces who captured Hamdan in Afghanistan hours after he left his family at the border found two surface-to-air missiles in the trunk of his car.

In May 2002, Hamdan was flown to Guantanamo Bay, where he became detainee Number 149. Soon after, he met Ali Soufan, the FBI's foremost expert on al Qaeda, who interrogated Hamdan repeatedly until December 2003, when President Bush chose him from among thousands of detainees in U.S. custody to be the first Arab defendant in the military tribunals.

Hamdan was not necessarily an obvious choice for this historic role. He wasn't a high-ranking officer of al Qaeda, nor was he known to have participated in any specific terrorist operations against the United States. But from the prosecutor's perspective, he did have certain things going for him. Because the military tribunal system was brand new, the government thought it made sense to try some lower-ranking operatives first, in case anything went wrong. Hamdan had also been in U.S. custody since his capture and had not been rendered to any foreign countries for interrogation, which might open the door for his defense lawyer to raise questions about his treatment. And his story certainly had narrative appeal: Hamdan had been with bin Laden between 1996 and 2001, a stretch of time that spanned not just 9/11 but al Qaeda's 1998 attacks on two embassies in East Africa and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

But in 2004, Swift, Hamdan's military defense lawyer, successfully urged his client to reject the government's tentative offer — 20 years imprisonment in exchange for full cooperation, including testifying at the military commissions of other detainees. Together with a young constitutional law professor named Neal Katyal, Swift built a defense that delayed Hamdan's military tribunal for years as it gradually made its way through the courts. His lawyers' perseverance meant little to Hamdan. Officials at Guantanamo have characterized Hamdan as a problematic prisoner, a rabble-rouser who turns every order into a negotiation and incites his fellow inmates to acts of defiance. For this reason, he has spent much of his time in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement. Hamdan blamed Swift for failing to improve his life on Guantanamo, often refusing to see him when he arrived and even firing him once, and went on and off hunger strikes, one of which ended with Hamdan being force-fed liquid nutrients in a restraining chair.

In the spring of 2006, Hamdan's lawsuit, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, reached the Supreme Court. The justices handed Hamdan a sweeping victory, with the majority finding that the president's military tribunals were unlawful. But Hamdan's odyssey didn't end there. Rather than offer Hamdan a reduced sentence, the administration redoubled its efforts, pressing Congress to authorize the military tribunals, which it did by passing the Military Commissions Act during the waning days of the Republican Congress in the fall of 2006. Hamdan was re-charged under the Military Commissions Act and moved into a new maximum-security facility. There he was permitted only an hour or so of indirect contact with other detainees during his daily recreation period. (He had to exercise alone, but his chain-linked recreation pen adjoined several others.)

By his lawyers' accounts, Hamdan's six years at Gitmo have left him a shell of a man. He has deteriorated mentally to the point where he can no longer meaningfully assist in his own criminal defense. He is suicidal, hears voices inside his head and talks to himself. And yet his trial, which is taking place in a small courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, will still influence the future of the tribunal system. Under the rules of the triubunal, Hamdan faces a jury of military officers who will decide his innocence or guilt. Whether their decision is perceived as fair will go a long way toward determining whether the military tribunals that President Bush first authorized in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks will survive under the next commander in chief. "In that sense, the fame — or infamy — of Salim Hamdan may endure long after his trial ends."


[B]http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1825334,00.html