Bin Laden driver could stay indefinitely at Gitmo
..WHAT? I thought they were closing Guantanamo!
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center said Saturday he has been researching new potential accommodations for Osama bin Laden’s driver, who could be held here indefinitely regardless of the verdict at his war crimes trial.
A jury of American military officers is expected to begin deliberations Monday in the case of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who faces a maximum life sentence on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.
Even if he is found innocent, he may not leave this U.S. Navy base. The military retains the right to hold those considered to pose a threat to the United States — even those who have been cleared of charges at Guantanamo’s “military commissions.”
The commander, Navy Rear Adm. David Thomas, said he has been looking for the most appropriate facility to isolate prisoners who have had their day in court.
“We would not house someone who has finished the military commissions process back … with the general detainee population. They would be held separate from the other detainees,” said Thomas, who added he would not build a new prison.
The tribunals’ deputy chief defense counsel, Michael Berrigan, said the possibility of acquitted men remaining confined here reveals the proceedings as “show trials.”
“What’s the purpose here? Mr. Hamdan is going to be held until the government wants to release him,” Berrigan said. “It really has no connection to the underlying reality.”
Hamdan is the first prisoner to face a U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
He arrived at Guantanamo in May 2002 and is currently held as many as 22 hours a day inside an individual, solid-wall cell — conditions that have damaged his mental health, according to defense lawyers who want credit for time served if he is convicted.
Military prosecutors have accused Hamdan of transporting weapons for al-Qaida, swearing an oath of loyalty to bin Laden and helping him escape U.S. retribution following the Sept. 11 attacks by driving him around Afghanistan.
Defense lawyers say he was a low-level bin Laden employee who stayed with him for the US$200-a-month salary.
The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said in written testimony Friday that Hamdan was too “primitive” and uneducated to be involved in al-Qaida’s terrorist plots.
“He was not a soldier, he was a driver,” Mohammed said.
The military says it plans trials for about 80 of the roughly 265 Guantanamo inmates in the Bush administration’s specially designed system for prosecuting alleged terrorists.
August 2nd, 2008 | Category: Salim Hamdan, USA, travesty of justice, war crimes
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