Hamdan case is built on his own words
In the custody of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Salim Ahmed Hamdan drew maps to Al Qaeda training camps and compounds for his captors.
A driver for Osama bin Laden for nine months before his November 2001 arrest, Hamdan guided FBI and military intelligence agents to Bin Laden's private residences and guest houses and identified photos of terrorist kingpins still at large.
Interrogated dozens of times by soldiers, analysts and investigators after his transfer to Guantanamo in May 2002, the Yemeni with a fourth-grade education gave those working to avert further terrorist strikes vital information about key perpetrators of the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, the destroyer Cole blast in 2000 and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
With that wealth of evidence Hamdan readily handed over to interrogators, the U.S. government built a case against him -- the war crimes court does not recognize a right against self-incrimination.
A parade of intelligence agents testifying Thursday described the 38-year-old Yemeni as cooperative, cordial and a source of reliable information about the terrorist hierarchy.
Their testimony made clear that the first war crimes case to be tried here has been built almost entirely on statements provided by the defendant.
All of the seven FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents told the court it was their agency's policy not to advise foreign terrorism suspects that anything they said could be used against them.
"A source can be a suspect as well," FBI Special Agent Robert Fuller told Hamdan's defense attorney Charles Swift when asked whether he considered the defendant a war criminal at the time Fuller worked with him to locate and identify Al Qaeda assets in Afghanistan in early 2002. Hamdan was then being held by U.S. forces in Kandahar.
Testimony this week cast Hamdan as a $200-a-month servant in the Al Qaeda network, not a member of Bin Laden's inner circle. Even the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, has cautioned journalists against overstating Hamdan's importance to the terrorist network.
Under questioning by defense lawyer Harry H. Schneider Jr., FBI Special Agent Craig Donnachie conceded that Hamdan never suggested he was involved in planning, organizing or executing a terrorist act.
"If the general commits a war crime, is his driver guilty?" Schneider asked, drawing a "no" from the prosecution witness.
