GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- He was Osama bin Laden's driver, bodyguard and, for a while, his cook.
To the United States government, Sudanese citizen Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, 50, is an ``unpriviledged enemy belligerent'' -- whose guilty plea to conspiracy and offering material support to a terrorist group Wednesday marks the first conviction at the Guantánamo Navy Base military commissions under President Barack Obama.
Qosi pleaded guilty Wednesday morning at the military commission hearing.
Qosi was accused of joining al Qaeda August of 1996, and remaining by bin Laden's side for the next five years. Once the cook at the ``Star of Jihad'' compound in Afghanistan, he was a member of the mortar crew in a compound in Kandahar -- which he helped evacuate just two weeks before the strike on the Twin Towers.
Two months later, he's alleged to have come under heavy fire by U.S. forces in a quest to help bin Laden escape Tora Bora, according to documents charging him with conspiracy and aiding terrorism.
But the details of his service to the al Qaeda terrorist organization are hardly what matter now. His conviction is critical, because he represents a serious step toward Obama's ultimate goal: emptying out the detention center here, where 181 enemy combatants are still being held nearly six months after the president's deadline to close it.
His court hearing was still in session Wednesday morning, so the terms of his plea and sentence have not yet been made public.
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