A U.S. military jury in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, this week found Osama bin Laden’s former driver guilty of supporting terrorism, but cleared him of the more serious conspiracy charge. In the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II, Salim Hamdan was convicted of transporting missiles for al Qaida and helping bin Laden evade U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in 2001. Hamdan’s lawyers said they were exploring grounds to appeal, noting that much of the evidence against Hamdan, a Yemeni, would not have been allowed by a military court in the U.S., including evidence obtained by “coercive interrogation.” Hamdan wept as he heard the verdict, which could earn him life in prison.
The conviction was a long-sought victory for the Bush administration, which has been working for seven years to begin military commission trials at Guantánamo. If the verdict holds up, the way would be clear to try higher-level detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described 9/11 mastermind.
Justice has been served, said David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey in The Wall Street Journal. Hamdan, by his own admission, was part of bin Laden’s inner circle, and evidence suggested he had “advance knowledge” of the Sept. 11 attacks. As for the complaint that the military commission system is rigged, that is belied by the fact that Hamdan was represented by an aggressive team of lawyers who tried “to squeeze from the system every procedural advantage.” This was a fair trial, and Hamdan was clearly guilty.
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There was nothing clear about this bogus trial, said Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times. Hamdan was chosen to be the first case because he supposedly hadn’t been tortured. “Yet it turns out that Hamdan endured enough coercion while in United States custody for the military judge presiding over his trial to bar the admission of a number of his statements.’’ The Bush administration’s extra-legal approach to terrorism suspects has tainted this entire process. When the military tribunals are over, the world will dismiss them as kangaroo courts, and U.S. courts may overturn some or all of the convictions on constitutional grounds.
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