GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Jurors hearing the first war crimes case against a Guantanamo prisoner watched a graphic 90-minute film chronicling the history of Al Qaeda on Monday, which included footage of mangled corpses in the rubble of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Kenya.
The disturbing images, including some not previously released by U.S. authorities, were part of a film produced and narrated by a prosecution witness under contract with the tribunal hierarchy, the Office of Military Commissions.
The film was written, produced and narrated by Evan F. Kohlmann, who described himself as an international terrorism consultant who has conducted research for government agencies in the U.S. and several Western countries.
Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, the judge presiding over the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, cautioned the jurors that the film was being shown to provide an understanding of Al Qaeda operations, and that Hamdan was "not alleged to have been involved in any of these attacks."
Most of the film, "The Al Qaeda Plan," involved propaganda videos from Al Qaeda's media wing, As Sahab, and much of the footage had been filmed and broadcast after Hamdan was arrested in Afghanistan in November 2001.
The film was said to be modeled after "The Nazi Plan," produced for the Nuremberg trials of the late 1940s.
Allred initially ruled against allowing the government to show the last of seven segments, about the Sept. 11 attacks. He agreed with defense objections that it was "more prejudicial than probative."
Allred told prosecutor Clay Trivett, a Defense Department civilian lawyer, that he didn't want to expose the six-member military jury to the hysteria depicted in the final scenes.
"The planes crashing into the towers and the people screaming doesn't prove anything," Allred told the prosecutor.
But the judge changed his mind after images of charred, mutilated bodies were shown in a segment about the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and an Al Qaeda propaganda film about the 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole displayed repeated computer-generated explosions over the hull of the ship.
In a reversal that defense lawyers said was grounds for appeal, Allred decided to let the prosecution play the 26-minute segment because "it's not any more prejudicial" than what jurors had already seen.
