Changing lug nuts not a war crime, jury told Reuters

Published: Monday August 4, 2008





Print This Email This GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver performed vital services that enabled "the world's most dangerous terrorist" to launch attacks, a prosecutor told jurors before they began deliberations on Monday in the first U.S. war crimes trial at Guantanamo. But defense lawyers for Yemeni captive Salim Hamdan argued he was merely a hired laborer akin to the defense contractors who provide services to U.S. forces. "Changing lug nuts and oil filters" were hardly war crimes, they said.. Hamdan was not even trusted to know where he was driving bin Laden until after a convoy departed, Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, his U.S. military defense lawyer, told the jury of six U.S. military officers. Hamdan, who is about 38, was captured in November 2001 in Afghanistan, where he had worked in bin Laden's motor pool since 1996. He could face life in prison if convicted of conspiring with al Qaeda and supporting terrorism in the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War Two. Even if he is acquitted, or sentenced to less than the six years he has already spent in captivity, the United States says it still can hold him as an "unlawful enemy combatant" until the end of the war on terrorism declared by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks. Hamdan says he drove for bin Laden because he needed the $200 monthly wage but denies joining al Qaeda, pledging loyalty to bin Laden or participating in attacks. Prosecutors portrayed Hamdan as a key conspirator who enthusiastically drove and protected the al Qaeda leader, knowing that bin Laden's goals included murdering Americans and taking down Western nations. "He's an al Qaeda warrior. He has wounded - and the people he has worked with - have wounded the world," prosecutor John Murphy said. The prosecutor said Hamdan ferried al Qaeda weapons and served as bin Laden's bodyguard. He was assigned to drive him to safety if his convoy came under attack, providing the last line of defense for the man at "the top of this terror pyramid," Murphy said. "These terror attacks could not have been carried out without the ability to transport the leadership before, during and after the attacks and allow them to kill on another day," he said. The defense recounted testimony that Hamdan was bored by bin Laden's speeches and that when captured at a checkpoint in Afghanistan, he ran and hid in a ditch rather than fire the AK-47 he carried. Afterward, Hamdan led U.S. forces on a tour of Kandahar, pointing out al Qaeda safe houses, Mizer said. He said Hamdan had cooperated with U.S. interrogators, and alluded to secret testimony that journalists were not allowed to hear, apparently referring to an offer Hamdan had made to help U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "You know what happened, how we squandered that opportunity," Mizer told the jurors. Mizer also recounted written testimony from accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who described his fellow Guantanamo prisoner as a primitive Bedouin only interested in bin Laden's money and unfit to plan and execute attacks. Defense lawyers portrayed the prosecution's case as guilt by association and said Hamdan was no more involved in al Qaeda attacks than were bin Laden's cooks, farmers and goatherds. "Hitler's driver was never charged with a war crime and it doesn't work that way today," defense lawyer Joseph McMillan said. Hamdan's trial is the first to be conducted by the controversial tribunals the Bush administration create to prosecute non-U.S. citizens outside the civilian and military court system. An Australian former captive, al Qaeda trainee David Hicks, avoided trial at Guantanamo by pleading guilty to providing material support for terrorism and finished his nine-month sentence in his homeland last year. At least four of the six military jurors must agree by secret, written ballot in order to return a guilty verdict for Hamdan. (Editing by Michael Christie and Alan Elsner)