Bin Laden driver convicted at Guantanamo of aiding terror
Salim Ahmed Hamdan is found guilty of providing material support for Al Qaeda. But he is acquitted of more serious conspiracy charges.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- A military jury Wednesday convicted Osama bin Laden's driver of providing material support to terrorism but acquitted him of the more serious charge of conspiracy.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan quietly collapsed in tears at the defense table where he had sat through three weeks of government testimony about his involvement with Al Qaeda, mostly gleaned from at least 40 interrogations by U.S. federal agents.
The Navy captain presiding over the six-person jury slowly read out the verdict on each of 10 separate counts, announcing first that the 38-year-old Yemeni with a fourth-grade education was not guilty on both counts of conspiracy.
It wasn't clear whether Hamdan, dressed in a charcoal-gray jacket and traditional Yemeni head scarf, wept in disappointment or relief. Through nearly seven years of legal wrangling, including a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the initial war-crimes case against him, Hamdan has been apprised by his lawyers of the Bush administration's stated intent to keep all branded "enemy combatants" detained indefinitely, regardless of any acquittals at the tribunal here.
Defense lawyers noted that conspiracy was the only charge levied against Hamdan by the government in his initial 2004 indictment for war crimes -- a case thrown out by the Supreme Court ruling that the tribunal was unconstitutional because it had been set up by President Bush without consultation with Congress.
The guilty verdicts on five of the eight counts of providing material support to terrorism appeared to heed the military judge's instructions on Monday that in the war theater of Afghanistan, a combatant attack on invading U.S. forces would not constitute a war crime, though possibly an illegal action prosecutable by domestic civilian courts. Prosecutors had argued that two SA-7 missiles founds in Hamdan's possession when he was arrested could only have been intended for use against U.S. warplanes -- the only air power involved in the Afghan conflict.
The jurors deliberated for less than eight hours over three days before announcing they had reached a verdict. It was unclear whether their decisions were unanimous: military commissions, as the trials are called, require only a two-thirds majority for conviction.
To reach a guilty verdict on either of the two charges, the jurors had to find Hamdan guilty on at least one of the "specifications," or counts.
