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Split verdict in first Guantanamo war-crimes trial
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-07 11:16 Berrigan noted the conspiracy charges were the only ones Hamdan originally faced when his case prompted the Supreme Court to halt the tribunals. Prosecutors added the new charges after the Bush administration rewrote the rules. "The problem is the law was specifically written after the fact to target Mr. Hamdan," said Charles Swift, one of Hamdan's civilian lawyers. Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, said the appeals from Hamdan's case are unlikely to slow the pace of other Guantanamo trials. The jury reconvened for a sentencing hearing in which psychologist Emily Keram testified that Hamdan was orphaned by the age of 10, has only a fourth-grade education and worked for bin Laden because he felt it was the only way to support his family. She said Hamdan, who is about 37, wept when prosecutors showed video of airplanes crashing into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. "He told me it was hard on his soul," Keram testified at the hearing, which was to continue Thursday. Hamdan's lawyers said he is likely testify himself Thursday or provide a written statement seeking leniency. The military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, gave Hamdan five years of credit toward his sentence for the time he has served at Guantanamo Bay since the Pentagon decided to charge him. The Pentagon describes the Hamdan proceedings as the first "contested" US military war crimes trial since World War II. In March 2007, Australian David Hicks reached a plea agreement that sent him home to serve a nine-month prison sentence in what the military considers the first trial. The US now holds about 265 prisoners at Guantanamo. The US has been struggling to persuade other countries to take in the detainees it doesn't plan to prosecute, including many already cleared for release and dozens who officials consider too dangerous to let loose, even if they don't want to put them on trial. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said the split verdict proved the trial was fair. "The fact that the jury did not find Hamdan guilty of all of the charges brought against him demonstrates that the jury weighed the evidence carefully," McCain said. His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, also praised the military officers involved but said the process has "dangerous flaws" and that such trials belong in traditional military or civilian courts. Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Guantanamo Bay in May 2002. The military accused him of transporting missiles for al-Qaida and helping bin Laden escape US retribution following the Sept. 11 attacks by serving as his driver. Defense attorneys said he was merely a low-level bin Laden employee, a minor member of a motor pool who earned about US$200 a month. Army Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a former Guantanamo official who has since become critical of the legal process, mocked the choice of Hamdan for the tribunal's first trial. "We can only trust that the next subjects ... will include cooks, tailors, and cobblers without whose support terrorist leaders would be left unfed, unclothed, and unshod, and therefore rendered incapable of planning or executing their attacks," Abraham said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. |
