Inmate cannot call alleged 9/11 planner as witness
06 Dec 2007 00:47:22 GMT Source: Reuters
By David Alexander GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Lawyers for Osama bin Laden's former $200-a-month driver lost a bid on Wednesday to call suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to testify that their client is not an al Qaeda member subject to trial by U.S. military tribunals. A military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, rejected the effort to gain access to Mohammed and other alleged senior members of al Qaeda at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. He said the defense had waited too long to request them, given the tight security under which they are being held. The motion came in a hearing to determine whether Salim Ahmed Hamdan is an unlawful enemy combatant and can be tried by U.S. military tribunals established by Congress in 2006 to hold war crimes trials for people captured in President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. "You should have started the process of getting the witness much earlier," Allred said in rejecting most of the 10 requests in a motion the judge said was filed on Tuesday evening. The ruling came in the military's third attempt to prosecute Hamdan on war crimes charges and six months after Allred dropped the previous charges against him. Allred ruled in June that Hamdan, who is about 37 years old, had only been declared an enemy combatant and said he had no authority to decide whether the defendant was a lawful or unlawful combatant under the measure passed by Congress last year to provide a legal basis for the war crimes trials, formally known as military commissions. STATUS CLARIFICATION SOUGHT A U.S. Court of Military Commission Review ruled in September that tribunal judges can hear evidence and decide whether the prisoners are unlawful enemy combatants. That led to the latest attempt to prosecute Hamdan and a hearing to determine his status. Only unlawful enemy combatants who are not U.S. citizens can be tried by a military commission, the measure states. Lawful combatants, such as uniformed soldiers from countries at war with the United States, would have to be tried by court-martial or handled by other means, officials said. Hamdan initially was charged in 2004 but challenged his detention in a case that prompted the Supreme Court to rule in 2006 that Bush lacked authority to set up an alternative court system at Guantanamo. That decision prompted Congress to pass the military commissions act enabling the military to try the Guantanamo detainees. The decision in the Hamdan case came on the same day that the Supreme Court heard a third challenge to the Bush administration's power to indefinitely hold and try foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Hamdan was born in Yemen around 1970. He is charged with one count of conspiracy and one count of providing material support for terrorism. He is accused of acting as bin Laden's driver and bodyguard and transporting weapons for al Qaeda. He has acknowledged working for bin Laden in Afghanistan for $200 a month but denies he was a member of al Qaeda and has said he never took part in any terrorist attacks. (Edited by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)
