Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Osama bin Laden’s former driver and bodyguard was a trusted member of al-Qaeda who helped his boss elude US forces after the September 11 attacks and should face a war crimes trial before a special military tribunal, prosecutors said on Thursday.
But defense lawyers argued Salim Ahmed Hamdan was a civilian support person who should be treated as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions and not tried by tribunals set up to judge prisoners in President George W Bush’s war on terrorism.
The comments came in closing arguments after a judge heard the first witnesses in a US military war crimes proceeding since the end of World War Two. The Guantanamo war crimes tribunals first convened in August 2004 but no witnesses were called in any previous hearings.
Hamdan “was a member of the club,” said Army Lt. Col. William Britt, the prosecutor, in his closing arguments. “He was a member of the team. Not a peripheral member. He was right there with Osama bin Laden.”
Hamdan drove bin Laden and his son Othman when they evacuated their compound near Kandahar in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks, federal investigators testified.
