War court convicts first detainee
A Guantánamo military jury convicted Osama bin Laden's driver of some war crimes but not as an overarching 9/11 al Qaeda conspirator.
Posted on Thu, Aug. 07, 2008
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
COURTESY EVAN KOHLMANN
This screen grab of a video shown at the July 2008 war crimes trial of convicted terrorist Salim Hamdan of Yemen shows the driver for Osama bin Laden, at left, an assault rifle over his shoulder, a traditional Yemeni ornamental curved dagger in his belt during a 2000 Ramadan celebration in Afghanistan. Seated with the headscarf hiding his face is Bin Laden, according to trial testimony. The child was not identified during the trial but attorneys said he was armed with a weapon, too.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- In a historic split verdict that sets the stage for dozens more war crimes trials, a U.S. military jury on Wednesday convicted Osama bin Laden's driver of aiding terror but acquitted him of conspiring with al Qaeda.
Salim Hamdan, 40, bowed his head and wiped his eyes with his head scarf upon becoming the first man convicted at trial in the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.
The results were a mixed bag for a Bush administration that had doggedly defended its new war court, created to stage offshore justice after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The jury of six U.S. military officers took nearly nine hours to convict Hamdan on five counts of providing material support for terror, as a war crime.
But by day's end the military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, declared the five convictions redundant and ordered the jury to sentence him on only one charge. Moreover, he interpreted the acquittal on two conspiracy charges as clearing Hamdan of the allegation that the driver was responsible for 9/11.
So the judge banned the government from letting FBI agent
Robert Fuller describe to the jury how he dug through the
rubble of the World Trade Center before they start
deliberating a sentence.
''He was such a small player,'' said Allred of Hamdan, out of earshot of the jury. He summed up the Yemeni's role in 9/11 as "driving Mr. bin Laden around Afghanistan.''
The same military officers who convicted him are expected to begin deliberations Thursday afternoon on whether to give him the maximum sentence -- life in prison.
Meantime, the father of two with a fourth-grade education went back to the same place where he has been held since U.S. troops brought him from Afghanistan for interrogation in May 2002: Camp Delta, the sprawling, razor wire-ringed prison camp complex overlooking the Caribbean.
The admiral in charge of the camp said the military would hold convicts separately, away from the majority of war-on-terror detainees.
Hamdan is the first war court convict. But the Pentagon has charged 20 others -- seven facing charges carrying the death penalty -- and wants to prosecute as many as 80 of the 265 men now held here as "enemy combatants.''
A spokesman's statement declared the White House ''pleased that Salim Hamdan received a fair trial,'' and eager for more trials.
Next up is Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of throwing a grenade in a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier. His trial date is Oct. 8.
Already charged are five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, for whom the Pentagon seeks military execution. Their next pre-trial hearing is Sept. 11, with no trial expected before the next U.S. president takes office.
The Pentagon's chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, declared the split verdict proof of the integrity of the military trials. A mixture of acquittals and convictions, he said, ``well reflects an independent, properly operating system of justice.''
Critics called Hamdan's conviction a travesty.
Material support for terror was not a war crime until President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act in 2006, passed by Congress after Hamdan's American lawyers challenged the first war court format to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won.
''It convicted a truck driver of being guilty of driving a truck,'' said John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Added retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Swift, Hamdan's first defense lawyer who was assigned to Guantánamo in 2004 to arrange a plea bargain and instead enlisted pro bono lawyers to take his case to the Supreme Court: "The law was specifically written after the fact to target Mr. Hamdan, and that's where you lose justice.''
Politically, the presumptive presidential candidates interpreted the conviction as fulfilling their campaign positions on military commissions.
Republican Sen. John McCain called the verdict a vindication of a system he had championed in Congress. "We cannot treat dangerous terrorists captured in the battlefield as we would common criminals.''
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama saluted the jury. But he said the fact that it took four years for the historic conviction meant America should turn to traditional civilian or military trials to bring ``swift and sure justice to terrorists.''
In convicting Hamdan on the material support charge, the jury rejected his claim that he was a mere driver, a $200-a-month civilian employee of a Saudi millionaire who happened to be Osama bin Laden.
Prosecutors called him a bodyguard, a key member of al Qaeda's security detail whose job was to floor it should enemies attack bin Laden's motorcade.
In finding Hamdan not guilty of two counts of conspiracy, the jury did not entirely accept the Pentagon's theory that the Yemeni was a key cog responsible for al Qaeda attacks culminating with 9/11.
Prosecutors argued that -- even if he did not know in advance -- Hamdan affirmatively chose not to walk away from bin Laden after the terror attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000 and 9/11.
Neither defense nor prosecution lawyers would say what they would recommend at the sentencing hearing.
First, the defense had psychiatrist Emily Keram tell the jury of Hamdan's ambitions, should he ever be sent home to Yemen from Guantánamo.
She reported him as saying: "I'll take my wife and my daughters and go to the desert with a camel and never talk to anyone again.''
Pressed, she said, he conceded that for a living he'd like to return to his trade. ''I'll try to be a driver,'' she quoted him as saying. "But I'll take what I can get.''
Keram was hired as a defense consultant -- the Pentagon paid her fees -- and met Hamdan about 100 hours across several years.
Still undecided Wednesday night was whether Hamdan himself would address the jury -- possibly in an unsworn statement, which means prosecutors cannot cross-examine him.
Also unclear was whether defense lawyers would play a videotape plea from his wife Saboura, shot earlier this year by Hamdan's current military defense counsel, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, in Sana'a, Yemen.
Hamdan last saw his wife, then pregnant with their second child, on Nov. 24, 2001, as he dropped her off at the Pakistan border to flee the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. He was headed north, back to Kandahar, when allied U.S. forces captured him at a roadblock.
Before he was sent to this remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, according to trial testimony, he led federal agents on a tour of al Qaeda safehouses and compounds.
Join the discussion
The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Not a registered user? It's Free!
Register here. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
