Military Prosecutors Set To Open Major 9/11 Case

Sleep deprivation raised in bin Laden driver case

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1441480520080714

By Jim Loney
7/14/2008

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A newly-released document suggests Osama bin Laden's former driver may have been subjected to 50 days of sleep deprivation at the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, the prisoner's defense lawyers said on Monday.

Lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni in his late 30s, previously alleged Hamdan was beaten and abused. But they said sleep deprivation for 50 days, if proved, would be among the worst abuse he suffered at the hands of his American captors.

They also said the records indicated Hamdan and other prisoners at the remote detention camp in southeastern Cuba were visited by someone called "Alfred Hitchcock," apparently after the British master of psychological thriller films who died in 1980.

Hamdan is charged with conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. Prosecutors argue he was a willing participant in al Qaeda while his lawyers say he was a member of a motor pool and drove bin Laden because he needed the $200 monthly salary.

Hamdan, wearing a traditional headdress and a white gown under a Western-style blazer, attended the first day of a week of hearings on legal motions before the war court.

His trial, scheduled to start in a week, would be the first at the tribunals. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Hamdan's lawyers said they discovered the document among 600 pages of "confinement" evidence handed over to the defense team on Saturday, 9 days before trial. It said Hamdan was put into "Operation Sandman" between June 11 and July 30, 2003.

Operation Sandman has been described in press reports as a program devised by behavioral scientists where an inmate's sleep is systematically interrupted.

"My view personally is that sleep deprivation of that nature extending for 50 days would constitute torture," said Joseph McMillan, one of Hamdan's civilian lawyers.

Documents released last week indicated that Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr was deprived of uninterrupted sleep at Guantanamo before an interview by a Canadian investigator.

Last month a defense lawyer urged a Guantanamo judge to help restore America's reputation by dropping attempted murder charges against Afghan prisoner Mohammed Jawad because he was subjected to 14 consecutive days of sleep deprivation.

Hamdan's lawyers have asked the war court to throw out his out-of-court statements due to coercion.

Their motions allege Hamdan was beaten in Afghanistan and subjected to "more sophisticated" abuse at Guantanamo including sexual humiliation, isolation, intimidation and deception.

WHO WAS ALFRED HITCHCOCK?
Defense lawyers said they were curious about the meaning of entries in the documents that "Alfred Hitchcock" had visited Hamdan and other prisoners.

"Who Alfred Hitchcock is I have no idea," said Navy Lt. Cmdr Brian Mizer, a defense lawyer. "It's obviously a code name for something."

Mike Berrigan, deputy chief defense counsel for the tribunals, called the last-minute submission of the documents "outrageous" and said it was another example of the unfairness of the tribunals.

"It's no way to do business and it puts a lie, to the world, that these are full and fair proceedings," he said.

Military officials had no immediate comment. The defense said it would seek sanctions as a result of the last-minute handover of papers due last December.

Earlier in the hearings, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the military judge, said accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some of his co-defendants may have relevant evidence to offer as defense witnesses for Hamdan.

The defense intends to call eight prisoners, including Mohammed and three other alleged September 11 plotters, Walid bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mustafa al Hawsawi. They say Mohammed and bin Attash have evidence to exonerate Hamdan.
 
Khadr interrogation footage puts spotlight on CSIS

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080713.wkhadr14/BNStory/National/home

COLIN FREEZE
From Monday's Globe and Mail

July 13, 2008 at 9:10 PM EDT

When a Canadian spymaster was asked three years ago whether his agency had kept any tapes of its talks with teenage prisoner Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Bay, his reply was that nothing could be said.

The alleged existence of any such tapes was classified.

“To answer that question would disclose national security privileged information,” said Jack Hooper, a CSIS deputy director compelled to testify by lawyers acting for Mr. Khadr, the Canadian citizen being detained in the U.S. prison camp in Cuba.

“Mr. Khadr has provided us with a great deal of specific information concerning Canadian-based operatives associated with al-Qaeda, some of whom are still at large,” Mr. Hooper said. But he said it was illegal to even speak to whether records of the conversations were retained. “Disclosure of that information would reveal service operational methodologies and tactics.”

It was illegal – in 2005. But this week, CSIS, which has always operated in the shadows, will find itself in an uncomfortable spotlight. After a series of stunning legal decisions, footage of the CSIS interrogation of Mr. Khadr is about to be revealed.

Four DVDs – originally marked “Secret/No Foreign” by U.S. agencies that created them – show the Canadian Security Intelligence Service at work, something that has never happened before. This is being done over the objections of CSIS, which is far better known for destroying its own tapes than showing them, and U.S. agencies who will likely be irritated that Canadians courts have ordered up the DVDs that will provide a rare glimpse inside the secret prison camp operating on leased land in Cuba.

A CSIS agent, who travelled to Guantanamo Bay in February, 2003, will be shown grilling Mr. Khadr about six months after his capture, for seven hours over three days. His face obscured to preserve his secret identity, the agent will be seen asking Mr. Khadr questions about the al-Qaeda figures he met while he was raised in Afghanistan by his fundamentalist parents, before being captured as a 15-year-old alleged “enemy combatant.”

The CSIS operative will also be seen asking the teenager hard questions about his relationship with Islam. More than once, Mr. Khadr will be shown breaking down, crying, denying he knows anything about al-Qaeda.

The CSIS footage promises to be wrenching and remarkable, given the service was created a quarter-century ago to protect Canada while – and this is the cardinal rule – keeping its sources and methods secret.

Lately, clandestine activities provided for in 1984's CSIS Act have been running into a competing and concurrent law. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms bestows some of the world's highest civil-liberties protections to Canadian citizens, meaning that just as CSIS is getting more ambitious about chasing alleged terrorists at home and abroad, it is finding it is getting a lot harder to keep national security secrets.

“This has got to be the decade that the spies came in from the cold,” Jim Judd, CSIS's director said in a speech in April. “Whether voluntarily, or kicking and screaming.”

He spoke of a world where the “judicialization” of intelligence practices and aggressive reporting threatens the very idea of state secrecy.

Since Omar Khadr was detained in Guantanamo Bay on allegations he killed an American soldier, the now-21-year-old has been visited several times by agents from CSIS and Foreign Affairs Canada, after they negotiated access to Guantanamo Bay through the Pentagon.

Then, in 2005, a Federal Court judge examined Mr. Khadr's case and banned CSIS from future visits, ruling the “conditions at Guantanamo Bay do not meet Charter standards.” In May of this year, the Supreme Court of Canada went further: Canadian agencies were ordered to hand over the secret fruits of their past interviews to Mr. Khadr's defence team.

Exactly what would be produced for public consumption and what would be kept secret was ambiguous until the Federal Court of Canada settled matters last month. After hearing motions from The Globe and Mail and CTV and other media organizations, Mr. Justice Richard Mosley said certain documents and the DVDs could be released to the Khadr legal team, who were free to circulate materials as they saw fit.

The documents made headlines after being e-mailed to media organizations last week. This week, Mr. Khadr's defence plans to circulate the videos, with the hope of shaming Canadian officials into lobbying for his repatriation.

Federal government lawyers had argued that the disclosures of U.S. information could cause rifts with American intelligence. Judge Mosley did not dispute this. “It may cause some harm to Canada-U.S. relations,” he ruled, but added he expects the damage will be “minimal.”

“In any event,” he said, “I am satisfied that the public interest in disclosure of this information outweighs the public interest in non-disclosure.”
 
He spoke of a world where the “judicialization” of intelligence practices and aggressive reporting threatens the very idea of state secrecy.

Like that's a bad thing.
 
Decision on first Guantanamo trial expected Friday

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Decision_on_first_Guantanamo_trial__07152008.html

7/16/2008

The Bush administration and defense lawyers are awaiting a federal judge's decision due Friday to see whether the first war crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay will go ahead next week or be postponed once again.

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur and bodyguard held for more than six years, is scheduled to face charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism beginning Monday in the nation's first war crimes tribunal since the end of World War II.

Lawyers for Hamdan, a 37-year-old Yemenite, have called for suspension of the trial following the US Supreme Court's June decision allowing the roughly 260 inmates at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

The US Justice Department by contrast is pushing for the trial by military tribunal to go proceed next week, court documents released Tuesday showed.

President George W. Bush and his administration have faced heated criticism since 2002 for detaining prisoners for years without ever giving them the right to defend themselves in court.

A federal judge in Washington, James Robertson, will have the final word on Friday, after a hearing with the two sides Thursday.

His decision is complicated by some 200 procedures of Habeas Corpus -- the right to contest one's detention -- filed by detainees in Guantanamo, Hamdan included, and being examined by federal court judges.

It also comes as the youngest detainee at Guantanamo, Canadian teenager Omar Khadr, was shown sobbing and begging for help as he was interrogated at the prison by Canadian agents in 2003 in a video released Tuesday.

Khadr, accused of killing a US soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old, faces trial by military tribunal in October.

Hamdan is challenging the validity of the military tribunal set up by Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

That system was struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2006, only to see Congress pass legislation to legalize it four months later.

But in a serious blow to the Bush administration's hopes to try all the "war on terror" suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, a Supreme Court decision last month allowed the inmates to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

That decision has "complicated the situation in Guantanamo," Bush told a press conference Tuesday.

"My view all along has been either send them back home, or give them a chance to have a day in court," the president said. "I still believe that makes sense."

In court documents released Tuesday regarding Hamdan's case, the Justice Department argued that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 "unquestionably confers jurisdiction on the military court to try (the) petitioner."

"The public has a strong interest in seeing such individuals brought to justice as soon as possible."

The department also stated that Hamdan's attempt to challenge the validity of the military tribunal would afford him rights that were "utterly unprecedented" in military tribunals.

Hamdan's lawyers said his petition "challenges the jurisdiction and constitutionality of the (military) commission itself."

"Without an opportunity to resolve these challenges before trial, Hamdan will be irreparably harmed," they said.
 
US judge to consider blocking 1st Guantanamo trial

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080717/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bin_laden_s_driver_2

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 17, 4:35 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A federal judge is considering whether to block the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial from beginning next week. If he does, it could throw another kink into the Bush administration's legal strategy in the war on terrorism.

Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, is scheduled to go on trial Monday as the first defendant in a special military commission system set up to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba. Other detainees, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are awaiting trials of their own.

But a Supreme Court ruling last month jeopardized those plans. The court ruled that detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention in civilian courts, a right that the Bush administration said for years did not exist.

Hamdan quickly asked a federal judge to delay his military commission trial, saying he must be allowed to challenge the legality of the system before he can be prosecuted. Otherwise, he says, he could be convicted in a process that is later revealed to be unconstitutional.

Furthermore, he says only enemy combatants can stand trial before a military commission. And since the Supreme Court says he has the right to challenge that label, Hamdan argues he cannot be prosecuted until that challenge plays out.

A military judge at Guantanamo Bay has already refused to delay the trial and the Justice Department is urging U.S. District Judge James Robertson not to get involved. Robertson scheduled a hearing Thursday in Washington to consider the matter.

Prosecuting suspected terrorists is a key part of the war on terrorism, the Justice Department said, and a necessary step toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.

"Putting the military commission proceedings on hold now would be contrary to these interests and hamper the government's war efforts, not to mention constitute a significant intrusion into areas within the province of the executive branch," government attorneys said.

Robertson may rule from the bench Thursday.
 
Judge refuses to delay detainee trial

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/17/gitmo.trial/

7/17/2008

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal judge refused Thursday to delay the approaching military commission trial of a Yemeni man who served as Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard and driver.

Defense attorney Joe McMillan argues for the injunction before federal judge James Robertson.

Salim Hamdan will stand trial Monday at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled at a hearing in Washington.

Attorneys for Hamdan claimed that the military commission procedures violate Hamdan's constitutional rights and that no rules had been established for such trials.

However, Robertson said it was not the right time for defense attorneys to raise such arguments, which can be done on appeal after the trial is completed. And he said it was not the court's role to continue delaying the proceedings.

Hamdan is charged with providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. Prosecutors contend that he was a member of al Qaeda from 1996 through 2001 and conspired with the group regarding terrorist attacks.

The government maintains that Hamdan has admitted being a member of al Qaeda and a driver for bin Laden.

His attorneys were attempting to cite a Supreme Court ruling last month that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detention in American courts, which would be to their advantage in delaying his trial. Robertson refused to grant their motion.

Neal Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who represented Hamdan at the hearings, said he does not know whether he will appeal Robertson's ruling.

"We knew this was difficult going in," said Joe McMillan, another Hamdan attorney.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said in a statement that the department was pleased with Robertson's decision.

"The government looks forward to presenting its case against Mr. Hamdan for the commission," the statement said. "We note that, under the procedures established by Congress in the Military Commissions Act, Mr. Hamdan will receive greater procedural protections than those ever before provided to defendants in military commission trials."

Katyal argued before Robertson, "we don't know what rule book even applies to these trials." He said authorities should "get it right the first time, with basic rules set in place."

Justice Department attorney John O'Quinn argued that it was time for Hamdan's trial to go forward, saying Congress had passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006 -- in a case involving Hamdan -- setting forth guidelines for commission trials.

He won an important victory at the U.S. Supreme Court that year, when the justices struck down a version of the military commissions. The case led to the Military Commissions Act, which imposed greater legal barriers for prisoners held at Guantanamo. In their ruling last month, the sharply divided justices threw out a portion of that law.

Katyal noted that Hamdan has been held for years at Guantanamo. But Robertson pointed out that if he granted the attorneys' motion to delay the trial, it would set off another protracted legal battle.

Robertson said in making his ruling that it applies only to Hamdan's case, not those of other Guantanamo detainees.

Under the Military Commissions Act, those facing military commission trials have a limited right to appeal any conviction, reducing the jurisdiction of federal courts. The suspects must also prove to a three-person panel of military officers that they are not a terrorism risk. But defendants would have access to evidence normally given to a jury, and CIA agents were given more guidance in how far they can go in interrogating prisoners.

In addition to the Hamdan case, in 2004 the justices affirmed the right of prisoners to challenge their detention in federal court. Congress and the Bush administration have sought to restrict such access.

The White House has said it is considering whether to close the Guantanamo prison, suggesting that some of the high-level al Qaeda detainees could be transferred to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and a military brig in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Both presumptive presidential nominees, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, have said they would close Guantanamo Bay.

Americans are split on the issue, according to a 2007 poll by CNN and Opinion Research Corp., with 46 percent supporting its continued operation and 45 percent opposed.

Most of the dozens of pending detainee cases have been handled in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. In February 2007, that court upheld the Military Commissions Act's provision stripping courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges from Guantanamo prisoners, but a three-judge panel of the same D.C. Circuit later expressed concern about why the U.S. military continues to limit attorney access to the Guantanamo men.

About 270 detainees are being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to the Pentagon. They include 14 suspected top al Qaeda figures, among them Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, suspected mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, who was transferred to the facility for trial in 2006.
 
Alleged 9/11 mastermind may testify in Hamdan's trial

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/44714.html

By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A war court judge on Friday ordered the government to allow Salim Hamdan's attorneys to meet with the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks before the start Monday of Hamdan's trial on charge he supplied material support to a terrorist organization as Osama bin laden's driver.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the judge in the military commission, said that Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer should be allowed to interview Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other so-called high-value detainees implicated in plotting the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At issue for Hamdan is whether Mohammed and other alleged members of the senior al Qaida inner circle would offer testimony that would back his claim that he never was anything more than a hired go-for for the al Qaida leader.

Prosecutors had consistently balked at granting Hamdan's lawyers access, but said Friday that arrangements would be made. Allred said this week that Mohammed and others should be allowed to testify. But by Friday afternoon it was not clear whether Mohammed would actually testify and if so whether reporters and other court observers would be allowed to watch.

Allred ordered that Mizer be allowed access to the men over the weekend.

The Pentagon has been assembling 22 witnesses for the trial. The government has predicted it would take 10 to 14 days to present its evidence, followed by a week or more of defense testimony.

'The CIA, which had kept Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in secret detention until turning them over to the military, has insisted that their former captives can talk only to people at Guantanamo with special classified security clearances. But Mizer already holds the needed clearances.
 
Guantanamo Bay: Bin Laden's driver begins trial today

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/newsbriefs/story.html?id=c12aafa1-aeea-4a56-84b7-5cc4635af7db

Citizen News Services
Published: Monday, July 21, 2008

Osama bin Laden's driver will face a controversial form of American justice today in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, 61/2 years after the United States opened its prison camp in Cuba to jail fighters in the "war on terror." Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni, faces life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism in a court created by President George W. Bush in response to 9/11.
 
Former Bin Laden Driver Pleads Not Guilty
Salim Hamdan is the First Person to Face a U.S. War Crimes Trial Since WWII

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=5414313

7/21/2008

The first war crimes trial at Guantanamo has begun with a not guilty plea from a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

Salim Hamdan entered the plea Monday through his lawyer under tight security at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

He is the first prisoner to face a U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.

Hamdan is charged with conspiracy and aiding terrorism. He could get up to life in prison if convicted.

The trial is expected to take three to four weeks with testimony from nearly two dozen Pentagon witnesses.
 
Bin Laden's driver is in the dock, but America's war on terror is on trial
The first military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay begins tomorrow. Its outcome will determine far more than the fate of a minor al-Qa'ida figure

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bin-ladens-driver-is-in-the-dock-but-americas-war-on-terror-is-on-trial-872413.html

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Sunday, 20 July 2008

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's personal driver, will enter a specially built courtroom in Guantanamo Bay tomorrow for the first full trial of any of the hundreds of detainees to have been sent to America's infamous prison camp since the 9/11 attacks nearly seven years ago.

Instead of one of al-Qa'ida's top leaders in captivity – such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the accused in the first US military tribunal since the Second World War is a 39-year-old Yemeni, whose lawyers say he belongs on a psychiatric ward rather than in jail. Heightening the irony, a military judge has overruled prosecutors and decided that Mr Hamdan's lawyers can question the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks and other possible witnesses about the driver. The judge threatened to delay the trial if prosecutors did not arrange this over the weekend.

Even the US does not claim that the driver and sometime mechanic, who earned a mere $200 (£100) a month, was a major terror figure. But prosecutors allege that he carried weapons used by al-Qai'da and helped to spirit Bin Laden out of Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. If convicted, he could find himself in prison for life.

For many, however, it is the erosion of America's historic liberties that will be on trial tomorrow. The Bush administration created a system of detention without due process when it set up the Guantanamo prison camp in 2002, a legal limbo in which hundreds of detainees – including Mr Hamdan, according to his lawyers – have suffered psychological and possibly physical torture. The driver is alleged to have gone mad as a direct result of being kept in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day in a tiny cell; he is hardly the ideal subject for the first major test of President George Bush's much-criticised system of military commissions to bring terrorism suspects to justice.

Mr Hamdan left his home in Yemen in 1996 and tried to sign on as an Islamist fighter in Tajikistan, but could not get into the country. The US says he went to Afghanistan instead, and ended up working for Bin Laden. After the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Mr Hamdan drove al-Qa'ida's supreme leader between safe houses to avoid US missiles, according to prosecutors, who say he broke away a month later and evacuated his daughter and pregnant wife from Kandahar in the midst of the invasion.

It is not only Mr Hamdan's future that will be determined by the trial. There is great concern among members of the Bush administration that they too could find themselves before foreign or international courts for the role they played in facilitating and encouraging the torture of detainees.

The infamous "torture memos" circulated by Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Charles Addington, and two former administration figures, Douglas Feith and Alberto Gonzales, covertly approved the abuse of prisoners by the CIA. These men were publicly warned recently by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when Mr Powell was Secretary of State, to "never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia or Israel".

One of the most explosive parts of the trial could be the efforts by the defence to show in coming weeks that Pentagon officials interfered with military prosecutors and pressed cases for strictly political reasons. Hearings on that issue are expected to reveal how White House officials and aides of Mr Cheney were on the phone to Guantanamo – in a way, some claim, that made a mockery of American military justice. The former chief Guantanamo prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, a harsh critic of the way the war crimes tribunal system is run, could even testify for Mr Hamdan.

Since the US designated its naval base at the tip of Cuba as a place to imprison some of its greatest enemies, about 800 people have been held at Guantanamo, and some 420 have been released back to their countries without charge. The oldest known suspect imprisoned there was 95-year-old Mohammed Sadiq from Afghanistan, who has been released. The youngest is Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was just 16 years old when he was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002.

A grainy video of a weeping Mr Khadr, who is still being held, emerged last week, providing an unprecedented glimpse into the harsh conditions at Guantanamo. Now 21, he was shown being interrogated for three days by Canadian intelligence agents after he had been tortured by sleep deprivation for three weeks. The longest portion of the video, an eight-minute segment, shows a sobbing Mr Khadr, burying his head in his hands and moaning "Help me, help me" as the agents look on.

The footage, from a camera hidden behind a ventilation shaft, is the first video of a Guantanamo interrogation to become public. It was obtained under court order by Mr Khadr's Canadian lawyers, who want to bring him home. But neither the US nor the Canadian government wants to see him released. The US military accuses him of killing a soldier with a grenade and injuring another. However, efforts to persuade military courts that he is an "enemy combatant" were thrown out last year.

As for Mr Hamdan, he is "small fry, a grunt, and Bush knows it", said Marc Falkoff, a lawyer representing several other Yemeni detainees. "But the administration was never going to bring one of its high-profile detainees out first when nobody quite knows what's going to happen in this brand-new legal process."

The military commissions were created to try people designated "unlawful enemy combatants" after the Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration in June 2006 for tearing up the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war and denying the most basic right of habeas corpus to prisoners. Despite the international clamour against Guantanamo, the US has charged only 20 of its prisoners, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was tortured by "waterboarding" before arriving at the camp. One detainee, David Hicks, accepted a plea bargain in 2007, served nine months and is now free in his native Australia.

Mr Hamdan is suicidal and hears voices. He talks incessantly to himself and says that living alone inside a metal cell and never being allowed to see the sun "boils his mind". The isolation in which prisoners are held is blamed for driving them out of their minds with despair.

"He will shout at us; he will bang his fists on the table," said his military-appointed defence lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. His attempts to stop the case until his client is granted more humane conditions, enabling him to prepare his defence, were rejected last week. The authorities complain that Mr Hamdan was far from a model inmate and that he routinely spat at guards and threw urine.

Guantanamo inmates face more time in isolation than many on Death Row in the US, say experts on American prison conditions. But the camp's spokeswoman, Commander Pauline Storum, claims that detainees are more psychologically robust than the ordinary US prison population, with fewer than 10 per cent mentally ill, compared with 50 per cent of the inmates in US jails. Nor is there is solitary confinement in Guantanamo, she adds, only "single-occupancy cells", and in any event prisoners communicate with each other by banging on their walls.

Lawyers handling some 80 war crimes cases are closely watching Mr Hamdan's trial. "The issue of mistreatment of prisoners, the miserable lives they live in these cells, will come up in every case," says Clive Stafford Smith, the British lawyer who is representing 35 detainees. In April, when Mr Hamdan appeared before the navy captain acting as his military judge, he announced that he would boycott his trial, crying out: "There is no such thing as justice here!" The judge told him to have faith in US law, declaring: "You have already been to the Supreme Court [in Washington]."

But the prisoner corrected him. While his lawyers had won a famous victory over the Bush administration in a case known as Hamdan vs Rumsfeld, he had not left Guantanamo. Instead, in more than six years of incarceration, he has made exactly two phone calls to his family back in Yemen, and received no visits. He has been punished for having a Snickers bar in his cell that his lawyers gave him and for stockpiling too many pairs of socks.

"Conditions are asphalt, excrement and worse," he wrote to his lawyers. "Why, why, why?"

The echoes of Hamdan vs Rumsfeld are still rumbling through the legal system. While Mr Cheney's adviser called efforts to apply the protections of the Geneva Conventions to prisoners "an abomination", the Supreme Court ruled emphatically that the administration had to abide by these laws in its war on terror. Even in wartime, the court said, the President was bound by laws and treaties, including the Geneva Conventions. The administration had no right to impose military commissions unilaterally, with rules made up in the White House.

So under pressure from President Bush, the 2006 Military Commissions Act was passed by Congress. This is what will finally be tested tomorrow. The Supreme Court has given Mr Hamdan the opportunity to challenge his status as an "enemy combatant" by presenting "reasonably available" evidence and witnesses to a panel of three commissioned officers, while being represented by a military officer.
 
Gitmo judge: No 'coercive' questioning evidence
Military jurist bars some statements in case against former bin Laden driver

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25789074/

updated 8:08 p.m. ET, Mon., July. 21, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver following his capture in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors are considering whether to appeal the judge's ruling — a development that could halt the trial of Salim Hamdan that began earlier Monday after years of delays and legal setbacks.

"We need to evaluate ... to what extent it has an impact on our ability to fully portray his criminality in this case, but also what it might set out for future cases," said Army Col. Lawrence Morris, the tribunals' chief prosecutor.

Hamdan, who was captured at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001, pleaded not guilty at the start of a trial that will be closely watched as the first full test of the Pentagon's system for prosecuting alleged terrorists. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of conspiracy and aiding terrorism.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, said the prosecution cannot use a series of interrogations at the Bagram air base and Panshir, Afghanistan, because of the "highly coercive environments and conditions under which they were made."

At Bagram, Hamdan says he was kept in isolation 24 hours a day with his hands and feet restrained, and armed soldiers prompted him to talk by kneeing him in the back. He says his captors at Panshir repeatedly tied him up, put a bag over his head and knocked him to the ground.

Defense had asked for more
The judge did leave the door open for the prosecution to use other statements Hamdan gave elsewhere in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Defense lawyers asked Allred to throw out all of his interrogations, arguing he incriminated himself under the effects of alleged abuse — including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.

Michael Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel, described the ruling as a major blow to the tribunal system that allows hearsay and evidence obtained through coercion.

"It's a very significant ruling because these prosecutions are built to make full advantage of statements obtained from detainees," he said.

A jury of six officers with one alternate was selected from a pool of 13 flown in from other U.S. bases over the weekend. Hamdan's lawyers succeeded in barring others, including one who had friends at the Pentagon at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and another who had been a key government witness as a student.

Monday marked the first time after years of pretrial hearings and legal challenges that any prisoner reached this stage of the tribunals.

The U.S. plans to prosecute about 80 Guantanamo prisoners, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four alleged coconspirators.

Hamdan seemed to go along with the process despite earlier threats to boycott. The Yemeni with a fourth-grade education appeared to cooperate fully with his Pentagon-appointed military lawyer, whispering in his ear during the questioning of potential jurors.

"Mr. Hamdan expressed great interest in this," said Charles Swift, one of his civilian attorneys.

Morris said the statements obtained from Hamdan are "significant" to the government's case, and his office was evaluating whether to proceed to trial without some of them.

No statements without witness
In addition to the other interrogations, the judge said he would throw out statements whenever a government witness is unavailable to vouch for the questioners' tactics. He also withheld a ruling on a key interrogation at Guantanamo in May 2003 until defense lawyers can review roughly 600 pages of confinement records provided by the government on Sunday night.

Hamdan has been held at Guantanamo since May 2002. A challenge filed by his lawyers resulted in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling striking down the original rules for the military tribunals. Congress and President Bush responded with new rules, the Military Commissions Act.

Hamdan met bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996 and began working on his farm before winning a promotion as his driver.

Defense lawyers say he only kept the job for the $200-a-month salary. But prosecutors allege he was a personal driver and bodyguard of the al-Qaida leader. They say he transported weapons for the Taliban and helped bin Laden escape U.S. retribution following the Sept. 11 attacks.
 
Bin Laden driver said to have known 9/11 target

http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKN2230096620080723

Bin Laden driver said to have known 9/11 target

Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:54am BST
By Jim Loney

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Salim Hamdan's lawyer said in opening statements that the Yemeni, held for nearly seven years before his trial, was just a paid employee of the fugitive al Qaeda leader, a driver in the motor pool who never joined the militant group or plotted attacks on America.

But prosecutor Timothy Stone, in an attempt to draw a link between Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, told the six-member jury of U.S. military officers who will decide Hamdan's guilt or innocence that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the United States because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome," Stone, a Navy officer, said in his opening remarks.

The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, later explained that Stone was quoting Hamdan in evidence that will be presented at trial. Morris declined to say if the "dome" was a reference to the U.S. Capitol.

"Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused knew," Stone said.

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. U.S. officials have never stated it was shot down although rumours saying that abound to this day.

Hamdan, a father of two with a fourth-grade education, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two. He could face life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say Hamdan had access to al Qaeda's inner circle. Stone told the jury that Hamdan earned the trust of bin Laden and helped him flee after attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the September 11 attacks.

"He served as bodyguard, driver, transported and delivered weapons, ammunition and supplies to al Qaeda," Stone said.

Hamdan was being tried in a hilltop courthouse at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, which has been a lightning rod for criticism of the United States since early 2002, when it began housing a prison camp to hold alleged Taliban and al Qaeda fighters from the battlefields of Afghanistan.

The war crimes tribunal system has been criticized by human rights groups and defence lawyers, some of them U.S. military officers. Detainees have been held for years without charges.

Washington has declared them unlawful enemy combatants not entitled to the rights afforded formal prisoners of war.

Responding to the widespread criticism, Morris, the chief prosecutor, said on Tuesday: "In my opinion they are seeing the most just war crimes trial that anyone has ever seen."

WORKED FOR WAGES

Defence lawyer Harry Schneider described Hamdan as a poor Yemeni who lost his parents at a young age and lived on the streets, where he developed a knack for fixing cars.

"The evidence is that he worked for wages. He didn't wage attacks on America," he said. "He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America."

"There will be no evidence that Mr. Hamdan espoused or believed or embraced any form of what you will hear about, radical Islam beliefs, extremist Muslim beliefs," he said.

The first two prosecution witnesses were U.S. military officers who were in Afghanistan during the early days of the U.S. invasion in 2001. Both addressed a key issue at trial -- whether Hamdan had surface-to-air missiles when he was captured at a checkpoint near Takhteh Pol in November 2001.

Defence lawyers dispute the prosecution's contention that Hamdan had the weapons. But a U.S. officer identified only as "Sergeant Major A" said the missiles were found in the "trunk of a car driven by Mr. Hamdan."

He said troops also found a mortar manual with "al Qaeda" on the front, a book by bin Laden and a card issued to al Qaeda fighters and signed by Mullah Omar, the Taliban commander.

Ali Soufan, an al Qaeda expert with the FBI, took the jury through a long description of al Qaeda's hierarchy and called bin Laden "the emir, the prince." He said Hamdan was part of bin Laden's security detail.

"The people who are around bin Laden have to be trusted ... true believers in the cause," he said.

(Editing by Eric Beech)
 
Guantanamo testimony: U.S. let bin Laden's top bodyguard go

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/45505.html

By Carol Rosenberg | The Miami Herald
7/25/2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Soon after Osama bin Laden's driver got here in 2002, he told interrogators the identity of the al Qaeda chief's most senior bodyguard — then a fellow prison camp detainee.

But, inexplicably, the U.S. let the bodyguard go.

This startling information was revealed in the fourth day of the war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan, 37, facing conspiracy and material support for terror charges as an alleged member of bin Laden's inner circle.

Michael St. Ours, an agent with the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service, NCIS, provided the first tidbit. He testified for the prosecution that his job as a prison camps interrogator in May 2002 was to find and focus on the bodyguards among the detainees.

And Hamdan helped identify 30 of them — 10 percent of the roughly 300 detainees then held here. They had just been transferred to Camp Delta from the crude compound called Camp X-Ray, and U.S. intelligence was still trying to unmask them.

Chief among them was Casablanca-born Abdallah Tabarak, then 47, described by St. Ours as "a hard individual," and, thanks to Hamdan, "the head bodyguard of all the bodyguards."

St. Ours said he was eager to speak with Tabarak. But the Moroccan was "uncooperative," and St. Ours moved on to other intelligence jobs — and never learned afterward what became of him.

Then, on cross-examination, Hamdan defense attorney Harry Schneider dropped a bombshell:

"Would it surprise you to learn he was released without ever being charged?" St. Ours looked stunned.

"Yeah," he said.

Prison camp and Pentagon spokesmen did not reply Thursday to a request for an explanation. Tabarak's name was gone from an official prison camp roster drawn up by the Defense Department in September 2004, after some 200 captives had been sent away. A month before, Morocco's state news agency said all five of its nationals had been repatriated from the camps, for investigation.

For two days, FBI and other federal agents have testified about the extent -- and limits -- of Hamdan's cooperation in a string of interrogations since his November 2001 capture by U.S.-allied Afghan forces at a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan.

Defense lawyers have sought to portray the father of two with a fourth-grade education as ultimately helpful to the Americans — after he initially covered up his relationship with bin Laden.

Prosecutors have called him truculent, a loyal and trusted member of bin Laden's inner circle who grudgingly spoke with interrogators — and never came clean on why there were two surface-to-air missiles in his car when he was captured.

Hamdan said at his Nov. 25, 2001, battlefield interrogation that he borrowed the car, and the missiles happened to be inside it.

Late November 2001: Satellite Phone Ruse Aids Bin Laden’s Escape
As US forces close in on Tora Bora, bin Laden’s escape is helped by a simple ruse. A loyal bodyguard named Abdallah Tabarak takes bin Laden’s satellite phone and goes in one direction while bin Laden goes in the other. It is correctly assumed that the US can remotely track the location of the phone. Tabarak is eventually captured with the phone while bin Laden apparently escapes. Tabarak is later put in the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Interrogation of him and others in Tora Bora confirm the account. [Washington Post, 1/21/2003] This story indicates bin Laden was still at least occasionally using satellite phones long after media reports that the use of such phones could reveal his location (see February 9-21, 2001). The US will consider Tabarak such a high-value prisoner that at one point he will be the only Guantanamo prisoner that the Red Cross will be denied access to. However, in mid-2004 he will be released and returned to his home country of Morocco, then released by the Moroccan government by the end of the year. Neither the US nor the Moroccan government will offer any explanation for his release. The Washington Post will call the release of the well-known and long-time al-Qaeda operative an unexplained “mystery.” [Washington Post, 1/30/2006]
 
Guantanamo prisoner's cooperation with interrogators hurts him at war crimes trial

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...IVER?SITE=AZTUC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

By MIKE MELIA
Associated Press Writer
7/25/2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- An al-Qaida driver who gave detailed, insider knowledge of the terror network to U.S. agents is seeing his words used against him at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

The first week of Salim Hamdan's trial ended Friday with the latest in a series of FBI interrogators testifying about valuable information from the defendant, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who once mingled with many of America's most wanted terror suspects.

"I don't know if I ever thanked him," said special agent George Crouch, who interrogated Hamdan in 2002.

Agents have said that Hamdan identified key terrorist leaders, mapped out bin Laden's escape routes and led them to al-Qaida safehouses after he was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001.

Hamdan's lawyers say he has been interrogated by more than 40 U.S. agents, and argue all his statements were tainted by coercive tactics including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.

The target of the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II, Hamdan faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

Friday's court session adjourned early because Hamdan, who was treated for a fever at the prison hospital Thursday, still was not feeling well, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, his Pentagon-appointed attorney. The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.

The defense team lost a bid earlier this week to have Hamdan's statements thrown out because he was not advised of a right against providing incriminating information. But in questioning government witnesses, his lawyers have suggested to the jury of American military officers that he had no way of knowing that he was the target of a criminal investigation.

"Did anyone ever say, 'You've got to understand, somebody can use this against you?'" said Harry Schneider, one of Hamdan's lawyers, as he cross-examined Crouch. The agent said he did not remember.

Military prosecutors argue Hamdan cooperated reluctantly, and by the time he shared important information, it was of little tactical value.

The agents who testified said Hamdan was polite and generally provided reliable information, but was not necessarily forthcoming. Crouch said Hamdan, like many detainees, was often evasive.

"You want to tell the interrogator what you think they already know, and hold out on what you think they don't know," he said.

While the Pentagon chose Hamdan as one of the first detainees to face charges, some of his peers who did not cooperate with their captors have been sent home from Guantanamo.

Michael St. Ours, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, said a man identified by Hamdan as bin Laden's top bodyguard, Abdellah Tabarak, refused to meet with him for interrogations. Tabarak was released to his native Morocco in 2004.

Hamdan's lawyers have raised doubts about the tactics used to obtain Hamdan's statements, arguing in court that newly discovered classified records show he was kept up for questioning late at night ahead of an interrogation by one of the FBI agents who testified Friday.

Responding to McMillan, the agent, Daniel William, testified that he was not aware of any effort to disrupt Hamdan's sleep before his interrogation in August 2002.

"There was no 'good cop, bad cop.' It was not anything we do," William told the court.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, has suppressed some of Hamdan's statements, ruling they were obtained under "coercive" conditions.

This week, the defense received hundreds of pages of classified records on Hamdan's confinement that his lawyers are reviewing for other potential examples of harsh treatment.

Michael Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel, said the military provided the documents after a court-imposed deadline and the defense is now scrambling to review them.

The chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said he regrets that the documents were released late and his office is working with the government to deliver records more efficiently.

Crouch said he gained Hamdan's confidence in June 2002 through favors such as arranging for him to speak with his wife for the first time since being taken into U.S. custody.

"He cried quite a bit," he said. "He was very grateful for the opportunity to speak with his wife."
 
Former military prosecutor who refused to bring charges against 9/11 detainee coming to FSU

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080725/BREAKINGNEWS/80725014

July 25, 2008

A former military prosecutor who refused to pursue charges against a Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is set to give a talk next week at Florida State University.

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch declined to bring the charges because he believed the evidence against Mohamedou Ould Slahi was tainted by torture. Slahi is a suspected al-Qaeda operative who allegedly assembled the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, according to a news release from FSU.

Couch held that incriminating statements made by Slahi were obtained after he was tortured by military personnel.

The talk is set for noon Thursday at the FSU College of Law Rotunda, 425 W. Jefferson St.
 
9/11 Guantanamo trials unlikely before Bush leaves office

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/319/story/27409.html

By Carol Rosenberg and Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is scrambling to assemble defense teams for six Guantanamo detainees who are facing the death penalty for their alleged roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Knowledgeable legal experts, however, said it's unlikely that they can be tried speedily, meaning the cases probably won't be heard before the Bush administration leaves office next January.

"I will move as quickly as I can, but we will take our time and we will not be bullied by the government," said Army Col. Steve David, the chief defense counsel in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions.

"I believe this is a defining moment in our history, and we are going to take our time to do it right," he said.

"Any attempt to do these cases in 2008 would be a mockery," said Joseph Margulies, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a noted death penalty expert. He said that it would take at least a year for lawyers to familiarize themselves with the evidence against the six men.

The Pentagon Monday announced charges against the six that include conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians and terrorism. Among those charged was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

It was the first time that U.S. authorities have charged anyone held at Guantanamo with direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors face a series of hurdles in bringing the cases, including likely battles over what evidence they'll be allowed to bring before the military commissions that will hear the cases.

The law that created the commissions forbids the use of evidence gathered by torture. Last week, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden acknowledged to Congress that Mohammed and two other CIA detainees had been subjected to waterboarding, a technique that simulates the sensation of drowning. Hayden said in his testimony that the technique might not be legal, but the Bush administration has said that waterboarding isn't torture.

"If the government wants to use those statements or anything derived from those statements, it will have a serious problem," said Eugene Fidell, a Washington, D.C. attorney who specializes in military law.

David, an Indiana state judge who was mobilized to his current job, said that his office has nowhere near enough staff members to handle the defense of the six 9/11 defendants.

He said he'd need at least six lawyers, six paralegals and six independent investigators with top security clearances to work on the trials. As of Monday morning, he said, seven military lawyers had been assigned to his office. Six of those are already assigned to other cases.

The seventh — an Army major — began work Monday, and David said he didn't know if the new man had either death penalty defense experience or the necessary security clearances.

In the charging documents released Monday, the military spelled out how the six allegedly plotted the attacks, trained to fly planes, moved funds and practiced how to hide knives in their luggage.

The documents charge that Mohammed orchestrated the attacks and regularly updated al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on the plot's progress. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Outlining the plot took up 22 of the charging document's 88 pages. The remainder listed the names of the 2,973 people who died in the attacks.

The other five charged were:
  • Mohammed al Qahtani, whom the military said could have been the 20th hijacker had he not been turned down for a visa;
  • Ramzi Binalshibh, who's considered a top al Qaida detainee in Guantanamo. The military called Binalshibh a main intermediary between the hijackers and bin Laden. He also was named Mohammed's main assistant for "Planes Operations";
  • Ali Abd al Aziz Ali, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed;
  • Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi, who helped move money among the hijackers;
  • Waleed bin Attash, who's charged with training some of the hijackers. For example, the military alleges that he prepared reports for al Qaida on to get knives onto flights.
The charges still must be approved by a civilian Pentagon official.

Only one of the six — Qahtani — has seen a lawyer during his five-plus years in U.S. custody, and it wasn't clear whether that lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez of the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, would represent him at the war crimes trial.

Other lawyers said it was unlikely that private civilian lawyers would be willing to help defend accused 9/11 conspirators.

"You need someone who is independently wealthy and has no concern for his physical safety," said Washington, D.C. attorney David Remes of Covington and Burling, who's filed petitions on behalf of Yemenis held at Guantanamo.

"No firm with substantial resources that works for corporations is going to take the cases of these men, because being accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks is different in kind from being accused of being a mere foot soldier," Remes said. "If the accusations against these men are correct, they really are the worst of the worst."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 prohibits federal funds from being used in the alleged terrorists' defense, which would bar the use of federal public defenders, and resources to mount a defense would be scarce even for attorneys willing to undertake the cases.

"If private counsel wants to get involved, they have to do it for free, pass around a hat, or be paid for by a private organization," said Margulies, who's handling an unrelated wrongful detention case for another Guantanamo detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who was one of the three prisoners that Hayden said was waterboarded.

Defense lawyers, Margulies said, will need at least a year to familiarize themselves with the cases against their clients, find translators with the proper security clearances to speak help them speak with their clients and hire investigators to review highly classified information.
 
Guantanamo trial views graphic 9/11 video

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Guantanamo_trial_views_graphic_911_video_0728.html

Reuters
Published: Monday July 28, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver unveiled a graphic video on Monday of the September 11 attacks and other al Qaeda operations that is likely to play a repeated role in pending war crimes cases.

The video is entitled "The Al Qaeda Plan," an echo of "The Nazi Plan" made by Oscar-winning director George Stevens as evidence in the Nuremberg war crimes trials of German leaders after World War II.

"Oh my God" was heard repeatedly as crowds watched the twin towers of the World Trade center collapse on September 11, 2001, in a vivid highlight of the movie shown over defense objections at the terrorism conspiracy trial of Salim Hamdan.

The six-member panel that will decide Hamdan's fate also saw footage of charred bodies stripped of flesh in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and the body of a U.S. soldier dragged through the streets in Somalia in 2003.

Control tower conversations with one of the doomed September 11 planes were also included.

"The Al Qaeda Plan" was made for $25,000 by terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann for the Office of Military Commissions, which is conducting the trials of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. Its 90 minutes of video clips depict the history of al Qaeda from its formation in 1988 through the September 11 attacks.

The commission's lead prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, said the tape would be used in other trials but no decision had been made whether to use it in the trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Hamdan's attorneys objected that the footage would prejudice the jury. "They're trying to terrorize the members," defense attorney Charles Swift told the court.

But prosecutors said the video helped illustrate the goals of al Qaeda training and ideology. "It is a very important part of the prosecution's case," said prosecutor Clayton Trivett.

Commission Judge Keith Allred approved the video, after first saying it would serve more to prejudice the case than to prove a point. "The planes crashing into the towers and the people screaming doesn't prove anything," he said.

A pivotal point of contention is the significance of Hamdan's role in al Qaeda. The Yemeni native was caught in November 2001 with two surface-to-air missiles in his car.

Defense attorneys say he was a lowly driver, but the prosecution has sought to portray him as a trusted bodyguard who helped bin Laden evade capture and stay alive.

The two sides have also skirmished over an expert's testimony on the laws of war. With Hamdan being tried as a war criminal under a 2006 U.S. law, the prosecution is seeking to show the United States was in a continuing armed conflict with al Qaeda well before the September 11 attacks.

Hamdan's attorneys have sought to demonstrate that the battle with al Qaeda did not reach the state of armed conflict until the September 11 attacks, which could make it harder for the prosecution to prove Hamdan's actions count as a war crime.

Separately on Monday, the Pentagon announced it had filed charges against another detainee at Guantanamo and released three from the detention center.

The Pentagon said Abdul Ghani was accused of attempted murder, material support for terrorism and conspiracy over accusations he fired rockets and planted bombs aimed at U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, and tried to kill an Afghani soldier in 2002.

The Pentagon said it had released three detainees -- one to Afghanistan, one to the United Arab Emirates and one to Qatar. It said more than 65 Guantanamo detainees are eligible for transfer or release subject to talks on where they will go.
 
Nothing like some good old fashioned professionally made propaganda in the court room I always say...
 
9/11 Architect Is Unlikely to Aid Defense Of Ex-Driver

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003005.html

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2008; Page A13

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 30 -- The self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has refused to meet with attorneys for Osama bin Laden's former driver and probably will not testify at the driver's military trial, the lawyers said Wednesday.

Attorneys for the former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, had sought the testimony of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and seven other detainees at the U.S. military prison here, in the belief they could exonerate Hamdan of terrorism conspiracy charges. Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, has provided written answers to questions from Hamdan's attorneys.

But Mohammed sent word to the defense that "he's not inclined to come to court," Harry Schneider, a lawyer for Hamdan, said at a hearing. "I see no value in trying to bring him forcibly to testify," Schneider said. He added that it is likely that Mohammed's written answers will be submitted to the jury instead.

The development is a potential blow to Hamdan's chances of acquittal in the first U.S. military commission since World War II. Mohammed was expected to tell the jury that Hamdan was a minor figure, and the military judge has said his testimony is potentially exculpatory.

Whether Hamdan was an al-Qaeda insider who ferried weapons, as the charges say, or a mere chauffeur, as his defense team contends, was the focus of the trial Wednesday.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent Robert McFadden testified that Hamdan told him in a 2003 interrogation that Hamdan had pledged bayat, or sworn allegiance, to bin Laden. McFadden quoted Hamdan as saying that he had an "uncontrollable enthusiasm" for bin Laden's mission of "expelling the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula."

The testimony is potentially significant because a pledge of bayat would signal a closer relationship between Hamdan and the al-Qaeda leader than other government witnesses have established.

But McFadden's statement was made outside the presence of the jury because defense attorneys are seeking to have it thrown out, contending that the 2003 interrogation of Hamdan was coercive. The judge, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, said in a preliminary ruling that Hamdan's admissions would not be allowed into evidence unless prosecutors could prove they were not made under coercive conditions.

The judge convened a hearing on that issue Wednesday, and McFadden testified that the conversation he and another agent had with Hamdan was "friendly, cordial." Hamdan said it was "regular" conversation," during which he did not complain of mistreatment. But he denied pledging bayat to bin Laden.

Allred said he would rule by Thursday morning.
 
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