/ 24 July 2008

Guantánamo trial shown interrogation video

A black-and-white interrogation video of Osama bin Laden’s driver showed Salim Hamdan denying under questioning in a dark cell that he worked for al-Qaeda.

The two-hour video tape made shortly after his capture in Afghanistan provided a dramatic highlight on Wednesday of Hamdan’s terrorism trial before a United States military commission.

”I have no dealings with them,” Hamdan said of al-Qaeda in the subtitled video as an off-camera questioner grilled him. A circle of light wandered over Hamdan’s face and body and broke the darkness of the rough-walled room.

Hamdan also denied owning two surface-to-air missiles found in the car he was driving when stopped in November 2001. The weapons belonged to the car’s owner, he said.

The tape showed him in two questioning sessions, always sitting on the floor, at times with his hands tied and at times appearing to nurse aching legs. At the end of each session, guards put a cloth sack over his head and led him away.

Hamdan, a Yemeni father of two with a fourth-grade education, is the first Guantánamo prisoner to face trial before the controversial tribunal at the remote base on Cuba. He faces life in prison if convicted.

‘Happy’ with 9/11 toll
In earlier testimony on Wednesday, one of his interrogators said Hamdan overheard Bin Laden saying he was happy with the death toll in the September 11 attacks and thought the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down.

”Bin Laden was happy about the results and he [Hamdan] heard Bin Laden say he didn’t expect the operation to be that successful,” said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent.

”He only thought 1 000 to 1 500 people would perish so he was happy with the results,” Soufan told the six-member jury on the third day of trial.

The evidence by Soufan was meant to support the case by prosecutors at the Guantánamo Bay war-crimes tribunal that Hamdan was close to al-Qaeda’s leadership.

Soufan also said Hamdan told him about a conversation he overheard when he was driving Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, after the attacks that killed nearly 3 000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The two men were looking at a magazine that described the flight routes of the September 11 hijacked planes, Soufan said.

”If they didn’t shoot that fourth plane it would have hit the dome,” Soufan said Bin Laden told Zawahiri, according to Hamdan’s account.

”I assumed [‘the dome’ meant] either Congress or the White House,” Soufan said. ”Hamdan said he did not know what they mean by the dome.”

United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field. US officials have never said it was shot down but there was speculation about the issue at the time.

Marriage advice
Describing the relationship between the driver and the al-Qaeda leader, Soufan said Bin Laden had given Hamdan some marriage advice, suggesting he go back to Yemen and find a woman from a ”pious religious family”, and when Hamdan returned with a wife, Bin Laden held a feast in celebration.

”It shows a close relationship, an affinity,” he said.

Hamdan is being tried in a court for terrorism suspects created by the Bush administration after the September 11 2001 attacks. His innocence or guilt will be decided by a jury of US military officers who are fighting the war on terrorism.

The tribunal system has been loudly criticised as unfair by human rights groups and defence lawyers.

Prosecutors have portrayed Hamdan as a driver and bodyguard for the fugitive al-Qaeda leader who had access to the Islamic militant group’s inner circle. Defence lawyers say he was just a hired hand in the motor pool who never joined al-Qaeda.

Hamdan was able to identify some of the top al-Qaeda leaders in photographs and a suicide bomber who struck guided missile destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Prosecutors showed jurors a series of videos and pictures. Soufan identified Bin Laden and Hamdan standing together.

In one, Hamdan was carrying a machine gun.

”Who gets to be that close to Osama bin Laden?” prosecutor John Murphy asked.

”People he trusts … with his life, it appears,” Soufan said. — Reuters