Former bin Laden driver pleads innocent
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - July 21, 2008 Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, entered the plea through his lawyer 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.
Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, called a jury pool of
uniformed American military officers into the courtroom for
questioning by lawyers on both sides. A conviction on charges of
conspiracy and supporting terrorism could lead to a life sentence
for Hamdan.
"You must impartially hear the evidence," Allred told the
potential jurors. "He must be presumed to be innocent."
The 13 officers were hand-picked by the Pentagon and flown in
from other U.S. bases over the weekend. Hamdan's lawyers asked if
they had any friends or family affected by the Sept. 11 attacks to
see if any should be excluded as too biased to serve. A minimum of
five officers must be selected for a trial under tribunal rules.
Hamdan, who is in his late 30s, wore a khaki prison jumpsuit to
the courthouse overlooking an abandoned airport runway. The flowing
white robe and headdress he wore at pretrial hearings was not
cleaned in time for his trial, said Charles Swift, one of his
civilian attorneys.
The trial is expected to take three to four weeks, with
testimony from nearly two dozen Pentagon witnesses.
Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November
2001, allegedly with two surface-to-air missiles in the car. But
his lawyers say he was merely a low-level driver and mechanic
without any role in the al-Qaida conspiracy against the United
States.
Hamdan was taken to Guantanamo in May 2002 and selected as one
of the first inmates to face prosecution. His case has created
repeated legal obstacles for the Pentagon including a Supreme Court
ruling that struck down an earlier version of the tribunal system.
Allred indicated earlier Monday he would not allow the
government to use some of the evidence interrogators obtained from
Hamdan during his detention in Afghanistan. Defense lawyers have
argued those statements were tainted by "coercive" techniques and
the fact that interrogators did not advise him of a right against
self-incrimination.
The U.S. has so far charged 20 Guantanamo prisoners and military
officials say they expect to prosecute about 80 in all.