The US can begin trying Osama bin Laden’s former driver next week at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting the defendant’s plea to halt the historic first trial in the military system set up following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
In a victory for the administration of US President George W. Bush, US District Judge James Robertson ruled that civilian courts should let the military process play out as Congress intended — a decision that could clear the way for military commissions to begin prosecuting other terrorism suspects, including those charged directly in the 2001 attacks.
Had the trial been delayed, as requested by former bin Laden chauffeur Salim Hamdan, it would have been a sign that the entire terror-trial process might crumble under the weight of judicial scrutiny.
Hamdan argued that he should be given a chance to challenge the legality of the military trials, based on last month’s Supreme Court ruling that said Guantanamo Bay prisoners can oppose their detentions in federal civilian courts. If judges hold that to be the case, every detainee at the US naval base in Cuba could use court challenges to delay his trial for months or years.
But Robertson refused to step in to stop the Hamdan trial, which is scheduled for Monday.
“Courts should respect the balance that Congress has struck,” he said. “Hamdan is to face a military commission designed by Congress acting on guidelines handed down by the Supreme Court.”
At Guantanamo Bay, military prosecutors said the ruling gave them more confidence that the trials would go forward against 80 detainees, including alleged Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others charged in the attacks.
Army Colonel Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor, predicted the trials would soon become routine.
“It will start looking like the space shuttle,” Morris said. “At some point you look and somebody asks, ‘Is there a space shuttle orbiting or not,’ and you don’t know anymore because it’s no longer an extraordinary event.”
Hamdan’s Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lieutenant Commander. Brian Mizer, said he intends to prove the Yemeni defendant was merely a driver and a mechanic for bin Laden — not an al-Qaeda terrorist — but he doubts a fair trial is possible.
“This trial is going to proceed, but it’s not going to be full, open and fair,” Mizer said. “There are fundamental flaws in the system.”
Defense attorneys said they informed Hamdan of Robertson’s ruling but he had no reaction.
There is no guarantee the ruling means all the military commission trials will go forward. But judges in Washington’s federal courthouse, where hundreds of detainee lawsuits are pending, had said they were waiting to see how Robertson handled this first case.
Robertson, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, seemed concerned at one point that government attorneys were unable to give him a clear answer about what constitutional rights prisoners have at Guantanamo Bay.
But he said he was obligated to let the process continue. He said Hamdan could raise any procedural challenges during trial and, if convicted, he can ask military and civilian appeals courts to settle constitutional questions. The ruling came shortly after a military judge at Guantanamo Bay also denied Hamdan’s request for a postponement.
Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001, allegedly with two surface-to-air missiles in the car. He could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. The defense says Hamdan was a low-level bin Laden employee, not a hardcore terrorist.
The Justice Department said it was pleased with the decision.
“The government looks forward to presenting its case against Mr. Hamdan to the commission,” spokesman Erik Ablin said.
“Under the procedures established by Congress in the Military Commissions Act, Mr. Hamdan will receive greater procedural protections than those ever before provided to defendants in military commission trials,” Ablin said.
Hamdan’s attorneys can rush to an appeals court to try to reverse Robertson’s order but the court would need to move quickly in time to stop the trial.
Justice Department attorneys wrote in court documents that prosecuting suspected terrorists is a key part of the war on terrorism, and a necessary step toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS