Some evidence excluded as war trial opens
Posted on Mon, Jul. 21, 2008
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
ART LEIN / POOL SKETCH ARTIST
In this 2004 courtroom sketch, Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, left, appears with lawyer Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift during a preliminary hearing at Guantanamo. Hamdan's trial began Monday.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A military judge without explanation on Monday excluded from the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver any FBI or other interrogations of him at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, then began seating a military jury in the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.
Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the judge, agreed with Salim Hamdan's defense teams and denied the prosecutors the right to include a series of interrogations carried out at the base in early 2002. He was still weighing other requests from the defense to exclude certain evidence from trial.
Explanations were expected in written rulings sometime this week.
Hamdan, 37, is accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy, war crimes, for allegedly serving as the al Qaeda founder's driver, sometime bodyguard and weapons courier in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He is accused of spiriting bin Laden to safety before and after 9/11 as well as the 1998 East Africa embassy attacks.
For the record, Hamdan's defense attorney entered a not guilty plea moments before the jury was brought to the butter-colored building being used for the trial on a hilltop overlooking an abandoned airfield.
The driver turned up at the war court in his khaki-colored prison camp uniform, his head uncovered. For all but one hearing he had come to the war court in tidy, traditional Yemeni attire -- a white head scarf and gown topped by a tan suit jacket.
Defense lawyer Charlie Swift, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, attributed the rumpled attire to a mix-up, not a protest.
His court clothes were at the cleaner's, near the McDonald's at the heart of the base -- and were only brought to the makeshift Camp Justice, where the trials are staged, once Allred had gaveled the court into session.
Guards allowed Hamdan to change at a 10 a.m. recess.
Much of the morning focused on questioning members of a 13-member pool of U.S. military officers prior to seating a five- to 10-member jury -- with the potential jurors seeing him in both sets of clothes.
Jury pool candidates ranged in rank from a Navy captain to an Army major and also included Marine and Air Force officers. Among them were two women officers, two pilots and two former Navy ship commanders.
Both captains disclosed that they were friendly with the naval officer who was in command of the USS Cole the day al Qaeda suicide bombers slammed a bomb-laden boat into it, off Aden, Yemen, in October 2000.
It was not apparent from the limited questioning in court whether any served in Afghanistan, where Hamdan was captured in November 2001.
By lunch the pool was down to 12. The military judge, the prosecution and defense agreed to excuse an Army colonel who announced he has to take his daughter to college on Aug. 14.
Allred said he would allow the prosecution to admit into evidence some other interrogations of Hamdan conducted elsewhere, perhaps at Kandahar, Afghanistan, or Guantánamo, where he has been held since May 2002 -- provided the Pentagon could bring to court participants to vouch for their circumstances.
Under war court rules, which allow hearsay, military commissions prosecutors can theoretically admit a confession without having someone submit to defense attorneys' questioning about its origins.
Defense lawyers want to exclude all of Hamdan's statements -- except a sworn affidavit done with his Navy defense lawyer. They argue that the interrogations took place without the benefit of either a warning against self-incrimination or a defense attorney present.
Moreover, they argued in pretrial hearings last week that he was subjected to sleep deprivation and isolation around the time he was interrogated at Guantánamo.
The prosecution says no such abuse took place.
They also argued that, in the battlefield, no such warnings are given and a requirement to do so would endanger U.S. forces on the battlefield.
Allred did agree with the Pentagon that Hamdan's first battlefield interrogation would be used as evidence at trial. It was taken in Taktapol, Afghanistan, midway between the Pakistan border and Kandahar, within days of Hamdan's capture.
His lawyers say he had dropped off his wife, daughter and another family at the Pakistan border to get clear of the U.S. invasion -- and was returning a borrowed car.
Prosecutors say allied Northern Alliance troops found two surface-to-air missiles in his car.
There are two versions -- a transcript and a grainy video made in part with a green night-vision lens. In it, Hamdan does not admit to being bin Laden's driver and instead describes himself as a charity worker in Afghanistan with no ties to al Qaeda.
Join the discussion
The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Not a registered user? It's Free!
Register here. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
