Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Bin Laden's driver put at heart of conspiracy

July 22, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA - The U.S. government opened its first war-crimes prosecution Tuesday with a narrative of Osama bin Laden's driver overhearing his boss offer an eerie post-mortem in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:

"If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane, it would've hit the dome," declared Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone.

And so with his first words to a military jury, the prosecutor conjured up a conversation from inside the world of Al-Qaida, revealed by the accused, driver Salim Hamdan. Bin Laden told his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that U.S. forces -- not heroic passengers -- brought down United Airlines Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11 before terrorist hijackers could slam it into "the dome" of the U.S. Capitol.

Hamdan, 37, a Yemeni, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terror for allegedly serving as the Al-Qaida leader's driver, sometime bodyguard and weapons courier.

Prosecutors put him at the heart of the conspiracy -- driving Bin Laden to a meeting with some of the 9/11 co-conspirators, to an Al Jazeera interview, to a Ramadan feast at a paramilitary training camp to "further recruit and indoctrinate young individuals for their organization."

Seattle defense attorney Harry Schneider portrayed Hamdan as a nobody, an orphan who left the poverty of Yemen for Afghanistan and became Bin Laden's $200-a-month driver because "he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America."

He lamented the "horrible crimes" of 9/11, but said, "This man -- the only man before you in this trial -- did not commit those crimes." Moreover, the defense contends that Hamdan offered to help the United States while in Afghanistan.

The two sides addressed the war court judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, and a jury of six colonels and lieutenant colonels, whose names are withheld by order of the judge.

MCCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE