Gitmo prosecutors seek resentencing for detainee

By MIKE MELIA

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Military prosecutors have asked the judge who presided over the war crimes trial for Osama bin Laden’s driver to order a new sentencing hearing, arguing the detainee should not have received credit for time served, officials said Thursday.

The motion filed Wednesday argues that Salim Hamdan, who is eligible for release by January, cannot receive trial credit for his time detained at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base as an “enemy combatant.”

“We’re not looking to jack up the sentence, just to have it on a legally correct basis,” said Army Col. Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals.

A panel of six American military officers sentenced Hamdan to 5 1/2 years in prison last month, making him eligible for release by January. The judge informed the jurors that time already served would count toward the sentence before they began deliberations.

Hamdan, the only convicted detainee at Guantanamo, was found guilty of supporting terrorism but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy at the first American war crimes trial since World War II.

Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 30 years to life in prison.

Hamdan, 40, could be held indefinitely regardless of the sentence. The Pentagon reserves the right to hold him and other “enemy combatants” who are considered dangerous to the United States — even those who are acquitted or complete sentences in the tribunal system.

The motion calls for the judge to order the same jurors back to Guantanamo for a new hearing, said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a spokeswoman for the tribunal system.

Controversial Guantanamo legal advisor reassigned

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Leslie Schulman at 11:50 AM ET

[JURIST] The Pentagon on Friday announced [news release] that US Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann [official profile; JURIST news archive], the controversial legal advisor to the US military commissions at Guantanamo and supervisor of the Office of Military Commissions-Prosecution (OMC-P), has been reassigned to the newly-created position of director of operations of the Office of Military Commissions. As director of operations, Hartmann will be responsible for the initiation, review, staffing, coordination and execution of all planning and development matters relating to military commissions. Deputy legal advisor Michael Champan will become the new legal advisor to the military commissions. AP has more.

Earlier this year military judges presiding over the military commission [JURIST news archive] trials of Guantanamo detainees Omar Khadr and Mohammed Jawad [JURIST reports] barred Hartmann from taking any part in the trials of those detainees on grounds that he was unduly biased towards the prosecution. US Army Gen. Gregory Zanetti [official profile], deputy commander at Guantanamo Bay, testified in August [JURIST report] that Hartmann routinely bullied his counterparts and was inappropriately aggressive in seeking indictments against detainees. In May, Hartman was disqualified [JURIST report] from participating in the military commission trial of detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive].

"Detainee" kangaroo courts update

Judge threatens to suspend war court trial

crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A military judge in the trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr threatened Thursday to suspend the terror trial unless the prison camp releases a detailed log of Khadr's treatment in more than five years of detention as an alleged al Qaeda terrorist.

Khadr, 21, is accused of throwing a hand grenade in a July 2002 firefight between U.S. forces and al Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan. A Special Forces medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., died of his wounds. Khadr was 15.

His attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, wants the log in a pretrial effort to limit the scope of evidence given to a jury of U.S. military officers at his upcoming trial, expected in late summer. He argues the circumstances of some interrogations would exclude some of his statements from the trial.

Thursday morning, the military judge, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, agreed with the defense that it should get copies of the log entries from the prison camp's Detainee Information Management System, or DIMS.

Brownback is believed to be the first war court judge to threaten to ''abate'' the proceedings if the prison camp's command staff does not turn over the evidence.

''I find that this is relevant because it shows the day-by-day, hour-by-hour track of Mr. Khadr throughout his detention here at Guantánamo Bay,'' the colonel said.

The extensive document is "a method of determining how he went through the system.''

The hearing took place in the original military commissions courtroom, an old air traffic control tower on a hill overlooking "Camp Justice.''

A day earlier, war court staff retreated from the Pentagon's showcase $12 million ''Expeditionary Legal Complex'' following a series of technical glitches, including a power outage, in a first test use of a maximum-security, snoop-proof court created for the trial of six alleged 9/11 conspirators.

The long the Khadr defense team seeks would draw back a layer of secrecy surrounding Khadr's treatment at this offshore Navy base, where the Toronto-born teen grew into bushy-bearded, six-foot-two adulthood behind the razor wire of Camp Delta.

A statement Thursday evening from the prison camps command staff, called the Joint Task Force, or JTF, said the commanders were "working closely with the prosecutors to redact the records for release.''

Redaction is a process of censorship that blacks out information that the Pentagon or other government agencies don't think the public should see.

''This entails a significant effort to redact information which would put JTF personnel at risk,'' the statement added, without elaborating on the nature of the risk.

Defense lawyers argue that Khadr, the son of an alleged senior al Qaeda financier, has been subjected to repeated mistreatment at Guantánamo to reinforce a confession he gave in detention at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

They say he was coerced into a confession soon after his capture, injured with two bullet wounds in his back -- and punished here if he didn't stick to that first account.

Prison camp commanders have consistently denied that Khadr has been mistreated and say all enemy combatants are treated with safety and humanely.

Khadr was sent here in 2002 after his 16th birthday and has been held in the cellblocks with other adult prisoners classified as ''enemy combatants,'' -- not at Iguana House, a special prison camp set up for juvenile combatants since sent home.

Brownback noted that Khadr's defense attorneys -- Kuebler and Rebecca Snyder, a civilian Pentagon lawyer -- are cleared to see any sensitive national security information that might be included in the log.

He set a deadline of 5 p.m. May 22 for authorities to turn over the log or find a remedy for the standoff over access to the details of Khadr's confinement.

''If not,'' Brownback said, "we stop.''

After the hearing, Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a military commissions legal expert, said there has been no abatement so far at the war court, which is now receiving pretrial motions in six cases and has charge sheets for seven more in the wings.

''If you can't get discovery, you can't go forward,'' Crawford said.

Brownback's ultimate remedy after abatement, she said, would be to dismiss the charges entirely.

In early 2005, his attorneys sought a criminal investigation into allegations that guards used Khadr as a human mop to clean up an interrogation room at the prison camps.

According to their description, Khadr had been left shackled so long in an interrogation booth in March 2003 that he urinated on himself. To clean it up, they claimed, guards poured a cleaning solvent on his soiled prison camp uniform and dragged him across the floor to wipe it up.

In March, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said there ``was no evidence to substantiate these claims."

Different war court judges have been struggling with their authority to issues orders related to the running of the prison, a razor-wire-ringed series of camps that sprawl across a bluff overlooking the Caribbean -- several miles from the tribunal building.

The judge in the case of Osama bin Laden's driver, expected to be the first at trial, has set late May for a hearing on the conditions of confinement of the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

Hamdan's lawyers say he is so emotionally unstable after years of isolation in the camps that he is not competent to assist in his defense.

Last week the driver declared he would boycott the proceedings after the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, postponed a hearing on the topic.

''I don't have any control over the conditions of your confinement,'' Allred told Hamdan. "I've read in the newspapers that you and others are unhappy with them, and I understand that.''

Then Wednesday, a defense attorney in the case of Afghan detainee Mohammed Jawad, captured at 17, point blank asked Brownback whether he had the authority to intervene in the circumstances of his client's captivity. Brownback hedged a reply.

Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade into a U.S. military jeep at a bazaar in Kabul and injuring two American soldiers and their interpreter. He claims he was punished for refusing to come to his war court arraignment in March.

In order to get him there, his lawyer said, guards dragged him from his cell. In March, he was brought into the court in leg shackles, a war court first.

''I believe that some court should have some supervisory power over the administration of the detention facility. Up until now, it has been an empire unto itself,'' said Jawad's attorney, Air Force Reserves Maj. David J.R. Frakt, who is in civilian life a California law professor.

The crimes and cruelty of Buschco never cease, do they?

Guantánamo (from Miami Herald)

• McCain fights GOP over detainee move
• Judge: US need not say if it tapped lawyers' calls
• Canadian judge: Teen detainee's rights were breached
• Senators: Don't move Guantánamo to Kansas
• New Gitmo prison camps chief shunning detainees
• Canadian facing war crimes trial wants to be a doctor

JANET HAMLIN / COURTESY CBC

In this courtroom sketch, Omar Khadr attends his war-crimes trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba Thursday, May 8, 2008.

» More Photos

• Slide show | A Canadian captive at Guantánamo Bay
• Archive | Guantánamo documents
• Complete Guantánamo coverage

YE ES!! The shit is hitting the fan over detainees!! Yessirree, Bob!!

Failed Terror Trials Raise New Questions

by ANNE FLAHERTY

The Associated Press

Salim Ahmed Hamdan is seen in this undated file photo provided by Prof. Neal Katyal. Military judges dismissed charges Monday June 4, 2007 against Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden, throwing up roadblocks to the Bush administration’s attempt to try terror suspects in military courts. (AP Photo/photo courtesy of Prof. Neal Katyal)

Failed attempts to charge two terror suspects left the Pentagon scrambling Tuesday to determine a next step and emboldened Democrats who said the rulings exposed a flawed court system.

Military judges ruled Monday that the Pentagon could not prosecute Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr because they had not first been identified as “unlawful” enemy combatants, as required by a law passed last year by Congress.

Hamdan, of Yemen, is believed to have been chauffeur to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Khadr is a Canadian who was arrested at 15 on an Afghan battlefield, accused of killing a U. S. soldier.

The decision dealt a blow to the Bush administration in its efforts to begin prosecuting dozens of detainees regarded as the nation’s most dangerous terrorist suspects.

U. S. officials chalked up the ruling to semantics and said they were considering their options.

“We certainly disagree with the ruling,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Tuesday. The Defense Department “is looking at the opportunities for appeal, and what they would say.”

Lawmakers and legal experts agreed the decision was not necessarily a showstopper for the trials, and that new legislation might not be necessary to convict Hamdan and Khadr. Democratic critics, however, said the ruling proved the current law was shabbily written.

Last year, Republicans and the White House pushed through legislation authorizing the war-crimes trials after the Supreme Court threw out President Bush’s previous system as illegal and in violation of international treaties.

Bush established the specialized tribunal system shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but had not been able to convict any terrorists because of legal hurdles. After the law passed, the administration convicted Australian David Hicks, who pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida. He is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia.

“Five-and-a-half years later, we find what happens with that kind of arrogant, go-it-alone attitude even conservative courts say ‘no,’” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Leahy, D-Vt., and other Democrats have drafted legislation that would address various aspects of the law they say is unfair or unconstitutional.

On Thursday, Leahy’s panel is expected to pass a bill that would allow detainees to protest their detentions in federal court; the law passed last year specifically stripped federal courts of their ability to hear habeas corpus challenges. The measure is likely to be offered as an amendment to a $649 billion defense policy bill on the Senate floor later this month.

Co-sponsors of the Judiciary bill include Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Democratic presidential hopefuls: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware.

“The current system of prosecuting enemy combatants is not only inefficient and ineffective, it is also hurting America’s moral standing in the world and corroding the foundation of freedom upon which our nation was built,” said Dodd, who also has a separate proposal that would make more sweeping changes.

The defense policy bill, drafted by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee, is already on track to grant new rights to terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, including access to a lawyer regardless of whether the prisoners are put on trial. The bill also would narrow the definition of an enemy combatant and tighten restrictions on the types of evidence used to keep a person detained.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said she wants to go farther to close Guantanamo Bay prison altogether. The prison holds some 380 military detainees suspected of terrorism.

Republicans are expected to oppose most of the Democratic proposals, particularly Leahy’s attempt to restore habeas corpus rights for detainees.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who helped write the law being used to prosecute detainees, said he thought Monday’s ruling showed the process was working. (?????))

“In the rule of law, words matter,” said Graham, R-S. C., referring to the distinction made by the judges that the detainees must be specifically deemed “unlawful” before being subjected to the military commission. “Lawful” enemy combatants are entitled to prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions.

“The best thing we can do is let the legal community work this out before we try to jump in,” said Graham, a member of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday the prosecution is considering its options, which include filing an appeal, and noted that the court of military commissions review would be the “appropriate venue for the appeals process.”

One hurdle, however, is that the review court does not exist yet, said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay.

Another hurdle is sentiment in Congress that Democrats were not involved in helping create the trials and that the law was hastily written. Then there’s the administration’s patience in general.

“The only way this will spell the end of the military commissions is if this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” said Gregory S. McNeal, a law professor at Pennsylvania State University. “In other words, it only means the end if this is the final delay which forces the executive branch to reconsider their whole policy. I don’t believe that is likely.”

Associated Press writer Michael Warren in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Judge lets driver's lawyers question `KSM', Osama's driver to be allowed to get a defense

By CAROL ROSENBERG

crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

Salim Ahmed Hamdan appears in an undated handout photo.

• Document | Lawyers motion to interview high-value detainees
• Document | Hamdan's Pentagon charge sheet

Overruling government objections, a military judge has agreed to let lawyers for Osama bin Laden's driver send written questions to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other alleged senior al Qaeda captives in seclusion at Guantánamo, according to a decision made public Thursday.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred gave the U.S. government until Tuesday to set up an independent security arrangement to help lawyers for Salim Hamdan gather evidence they say could exonerate their client. Hamdan, a 36-year-old Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, is facing trial by military commissions at the remote U.S. Navy base.

At issue is whether captives identified as the senior leadership of al Qaeda can say whether the $200-a-month driver was among those who plotted the suicide attacks on the 1998 U.S. embassies in East Africa, on the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen in October 2000 and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

If Hamdan wasn't part of the plot, his lawyers say, the driver should be found innocent of overarching conspiracy charges. They sought face-to-face interviews with the alleged al Qaeda leaders, notably Mohammed, known in intelligence circles as KSM, the reputed mastermind of the 9/11 plot plus other al Qaeda attacks.

The prosecution argues that Hamdan need not have belonged to the cells that plotted the attacks to have been part of the conspiracy to kill Americans.

In a five-page ruling disclosed by the defense Thursday, Allred ordered the government to assign an independent security officer -- with no ties to the prosecution -- to review the defense lawyers' written questions.

The questions would be then translated by an independent linguist with national security clearances. If Mohammed and the other men reply, their answers would likewise be translated and subjected to a security officer's scrutiny to censor out national security secrets.

Allred limited questions to the captives' duties between 1996 and 2001, when the government alleges Hamdan was a co-conspirator as a driver and sometime bodyguard for bin Laden. They can describe what they did and what their al Qaeda roles were, what they know Hamdan did and the ``relationship between Hamdan and the leaders of al Qaeda, including whether he was planning a conspiracy or a common criminal enterprise to conduct attacks against the West.''

Permissible questions don't include where the men were held or how they were treated in three-plus years of secret CIA custody before their September 2006 transfer to the military at Guantánamo.

The Bush administration considers those details as national security secrets, which is why 15 former CIA captives are now kept in seclusion at Camp 7 apart from the other 260 detainees at the sprawling prison camps.

Navy Cmdr Rick Haupt, the prison camps' spokesman, said Thursday that he was unaware of Allred's order, and would inquire whether those responsible for Camp 7 would be able to implement it.

Even the site of their camp is a secret, although Haupt could not say Thursday whether in fact the location of the camp on the base was classified.

''What does that matter?'' the spokesman said, adding the prison camps were ''just not prepared to discuss'' the restrictions surrounding the special sub-category of captives.

The military judge in effect is emulating a formula designed by a federal judge at the civilian trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who denied he was part of the 9/11 plot in his material support for terror trial but ultimately pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge.

In that case, the Department of Justice refused to let the defense send questions to Mohammed, arguing his testimony would harm national security because he was being interrogated in the war on terror.

Hamdan's lawyers have asked to question seven of 15 former CIA detainees including Mohammed; Ramzi bin al Shib, a Yemeni and Mohammed's alleged go-between with some of the 9/11 attackers; Walid bin Attash, another Yemeni who supposedly trained some of the hijackers and Mustafa al Hawsawi, who supposedly helped get funds to the Sept. 11 suicide squads.

Those four men were identified as candidates for execution at Guantánamo as part of a complex six-detainee prosecution the Pentagon unveiled on Monday, charge sheets which await approval from a Bush administration appointee. None of them yet have lawyers.

In addition, Hamdan's lawyers asked to interview Abu Faraj al Libi, Abdul Rahim al Nashiri and Abdul Hadi al Iraqi -- because of their knowledge of other al Qaeda operations in Afghanistan not tied to the Sept. 11 strikes.

The CIA has admitted to waterboarding, or using a techniques known as ''water torture'' to break the will of two of the men -- Nashiri and Mohammed.

But Lt. Cmdr. Brad Mizer, Hamdan's lead defense lawyer, said he does not seek to ask them about their treatment -- only to find out if they might be witnesses to help exonerate the driver, who claims he worked for the al Qaeda founder for an income, not ideology.

Hamdan's chief prosecutor, Army Lt. Col. Will Britt had objected at a hearing last week, saying the prosecution need not prove that Hamdan was part of a planning cell to prove he was an al Qaeda conspirator.

Moreover, he invoked national security and said the military defense lawyer was seeking access to ''the most notorious terrorists ever seen'' based on speculation on what they might say.

Mizer said the ruling was a partial victory for the defense, which sought to meet the alleged senior al Qaeda leadership at Guantánamo to assess their ''credibility or demeanor'' as potential witnesses.

Face-to-face interviews were preferable, he said, because the captives might be suspicious of the written questions, and consider them part of a ruse by interrogators to gather intelligence.

US unveils new 'court" as Guantanmo trials resume

Do you ever have those days when your heart is BREAKING?

Today is such a day for me.

It was heart breaking to go and read just what got released on HiLIARy's incessant demand$ for more and more ca$h -- not quite enough about released for these tired old bones, heartbreakingly little for my taste.

I went and did a check of the blogs to see how ole HiLIARy was faring and, nope, not enough but some interesting stuff .. some give until 11 February to quit the race. No tears will be streaming from these eyes then! None, at all. The Queen will have to give up her naked ambition, and all those DELUXO women clowns who support her will just have to find their Fairytale Princess in someone else. As far as I am concerned, THAT woman should be knitting silk stockings in a Chinese factory for the rest of her life with music piped in from a band that supports Obama.

But this below - this item on Omar Khadr is the most heartbreaking of all, and that's not easy to say after reading about and watching the video on the woman who was stripped searched by police after calling them for help. I'll get around to posting about that tomorrow, after my PTSD attack wears off.

Connection between the two items in case that is going over your head /// how can a society's morals slip this low - that a thief and a liar gets major headlines day after day after killing god nows how many people during her "career" and a minor, a child soldier must endure such humiliation and mistreatment day after day after day when they should enjoy the support of a legal system that is supposedly designed to protect their interests?

HiLIARy is a disgrace to the legal profession, and yet, and yet those lawyers who support Omar Khadrs cause are not granted hero's status nor given the opportunity to give legal remedy to their client? There are many tormentors in this young, very young man's story .. not least among them Canada's press and OpED writers - save the exception of Michele Shepherd at the Toronto Star ...

I wonder if Omar will be wearing a stun belt. I hope not, but I am certainly afraid he will be.

And let me take this opportunity to say SHAME ON CANADA, this man should not be going to court at all! You, Stephen Harper, toady of George W. Bush and his band of international criminals are truly not in the spirit of Canada. You are an abuser and a total disgrace to my new nation!! SHAME!! Stephen Harper! SHAME!!

Thank you Michele,
Virginia

The reader here will find many comments on Hamden v. Rumsfield in the swicki to your left.


http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN03517884


Visit freedetainees.org to take action on behalf of Omar Khadr

and Mohamed Jawad, also a minor when captured.

U.S. unveils new court as Guantanamo trials resume

Sun Feb 3, 2008 5:14pm EST

(Corrects salary to monthly from weekly in paragraph 13)

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. military unveiled its new war crimes courtroom at Guantanamo Bay on Sunday as it prepared to resume pretrial hearings this week for Osama bin Laden's Yemeni driver and a young Canadian seeking protection as a child soldier.

The new court building looks like a khaki-colored metal warehouse on the outside and a traditional courtroom inside. It has enough room to simultaneously try up to six prisoners, lined up on faux-leather chairs at cherry-veneer tables.

It is part of a $12 million mobile court complex that includes prefabricated holding cells shipped by barge and cargo plane to the remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba, where the military holds about 275 captives in the Bush administration's campaign against terrorism.

The court complex is rising even as most of the candidates vying to succeed U.S. President George W. Bush in January 2008 have pledged to shut down the widely criticized Guantanamo prison camp. The court complex is designed to be moved elsewhere if it is no longer needed at Guantanamo.

"Whatever we're told to do, we can pick it up and move it to another location," said Army Col. Wendy Kelly, operations director for the Pentagon office overseeing the war court.

It will be ready for use in March and is part of the military's plan to try as many as 80 Guantanamo prisoners on war crimes charges. So far only one captive has been convicted at Guantanamo, an Australian who pleaded guilty to training with al Qaeda. After being held at Guantanamo for more than five years, he finished his nine-month sentence in his homeland in December.

HEARINGS THIS WEEK

Pretrial hearings resume in another courtroom this week for two other prisoners captured in Afghanistan after the United States invaded following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Lawyers for Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of throwing a grenade that killed one U.S. soldier and wounded others during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, will argue the charges should be dismissed because Khadr was 15 when captured and prosecuting him would violate international law protecting child soldiers.

Khadr, now 21, is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier who often took his family to stay at bin Laden's compound in Afghanistan.

His lawyers also plan to argue Khadr cannot be tried under the 2006 law creating the Guantanamo court because the acts he is accused of were not classified as war crimes when they occurred.

Khadr, who was gravely wounded by U.S. soldiers during the firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound, faces life in prison if convicted on charges that include murder and attempted murder of American soldiers. His lawyers said in trial documents that killing enemy soldiers had never before been recognized as a war crime and that "doing so is, almost by definition, a fundamental element of armed conflict."

Prosecutors will argue that Khadr was a terrorist and not a lawful combatant because he was not part of any regular national army that followed traditional laws of war. They said Khadr told interrogators he wanted "to kill lots of Americans" because he would collect a $1,500 reward for each one killed.

Bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, will also face hearings at Guantanamo this week on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. He has said he never joined al Qaeda but acted as bin Laden's chauffeur because he needed the $200 monthly salary.

His lawyers will argue that prolonged solitary confinement at Guantanamo has impaired him mentally and compromised his ability to aid in his defense. A psychiatrist who works for the U.S. Veterans Administration has examined and diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression and said he has nightmares, panic attacks and paranoia.

Prosecutors say Hamdan, who is in his late 30s and faces life in prison if convicted, was a trusted al Qaeda member who transported weapons and helped bin Laden elude U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (Editing by Chris Wilson)

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