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A military jury has sentenced Osama bin Laden’s fromer-driver, Salim Hamdan to five years and six months in prison for supporting terrorism.

In an exclusive interview with press TV, Gareth Peirce, a prominent human right lawyer said that Hamdan’s verdict has no legal justification.

“There is no logical legal sense to it that anyone can make out. The whole process does not deserve to be called a process. In a way it is very disturbing that it is reported as a trial with a verdict because it never was a trial in any real sense of the word and the verdict comes from a tribunal that were simply soldiers in a military trial without any legal creditability or justification…” Peirce told a Press TV correspondent.

She also raised the question that when a detainee is subjected to regular torture during incarceration, as was the case in the years Hamdan spent in detention, then what the detainee admits to is by nature inadmissible evidence while the very act of torture negates a trial and creates grounds for dismissal of all charges.

Peirce noted said that Hamdan’s verdict is an attempt to repair the public relations disaster that Guantanamo has created for the United States.

In other reports a Pentagon spokesman said that Hamdan will continue to be held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as an enemy combatant after he serves out his five and half year sentence.

While in custody, Hamdan will be kept separate from the general detainee population at Guantanamo, the Pentagon spokesman said (Pentagonspeak for isolation).

Gareth Peirce is one of the leading human rights lawyers in Britain. She represented the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four, as well as the three other British citizens released from Guantanamo last year known as the the Tipton Three.

Actress Emma Thompson played her character in the movie “In the Name of the Father.”

SG/HAR

August 8th, 2008 | Category: Detainee, Gareth Peirce, Kangaroo Kourt, Salim Hamdan |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL