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Guantanamo jury gives bin Laden driver 5 1/2 years
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-08 09:24 The chief defense counsel for the Guantanamo tribunals, Army Col. Steve David, said the government failed in its strategy to link Hamdan to the Sept. 11 attacks. "The government attempted to inflame the emotions of the panel," he said. "It didn't work." Despite disappointment over the sentence, prosecutor John Murphy described the jury's rejection of their recommendation as a "a vindication for the system." Hamdan admitted he drove bin Laden around Afghanistan at the time of the 2001 attacks, but said he took the job without knowing the al-Qaida leader was a terrorist. It came as "a big shock," he said, when he learned bin Laden was responsible for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, where Hamdan is from. Still, he kept the job, Hamdan said -- he needed the money, and couldn't go home. "It's true there are work opportunities in Yemen, but not at the level I needed after I got married and not to the level of ambitions that I had in my future," said Hamdan, who has a fourth-grade education. Reading a prepared statement in Arabic, he said he had a "relationship of respect" with bin Laden, as would any other driver in the al-Qaida motor pool. Hamdan has said he drove mainly low-profile pickup trucks with tinted windows because his boss shunned the Toyota Land Cruisers favored by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. At the time of his capture at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001, Hamdan had two shoulder-launched missiles, but he said the car was borrowed and the rockets were not his. The jury found him innocent of carrying the missiles as part of a conspiracy to kill US soldiers.Hamdan expressed regret over the "innocent people" who died in the attacks in the United States, according to a Pentagon transcript. His apology couldn't be heard by reporters because the sound was turned off during part of the proceedings to protect classified information. "I personally present my apologies to them if anything that I did has caused them pain," Hamdan said. Murphy, a Justice Department prosecutor, had pressed for a stiff sentence to dissuade potential terrorists. "You have found him guilty of offenses that have made our world extremely unsafe and dangerous," Murphy said. "The government asks you to deliver a sentence that will absolutely keep our society safe from him." The judge instructed jurors to consider the nearly seven years Hamdan has spent in confinement, and that he is the sole supporter of his wife and two children. The guilty verdict will be appealed automatically to a special military court in Washington. Hamdan also can appeal to US civilian courts, thanks to the US Supreme Court. Defense lawyers say Hamdan's rights were denied by an unfair process, hastily patched together after the high court ruled that previous tribunal systems violated US and international law. "The problem is the law was specifically written after the fact to target Mr. Hamdan," said Swift. Deputy White House spokesman Tony Fratto on Wednesday disputed allegations of injustice, saying Hamdan had received a fair trial and that prosecutors will now press ahead with other war crimes trials. Prosecutors intend to try about 80 Guantanamo detainees, including 19 already charged. |
