Trial of Salim is a sham - Military commissions at Gitmo

I was living in New York City on that September morning 7 years ago when the world changed forever. From the constant rumble of rescue vehicles passing my Brooklyn apartment building on their way to the Battery Tunnel to the fine layer of ash covering my neighborhood like a grim snowfall to the smell of smoke that lingered well into spring, terrorism had gone from a foreign concept to a daily reality for me. So I’ve been paying very close attention to the first trial of one of the co-conspirators who supposedly helped make the events of that day possible. The proceedings are now over and I’m forced to conclude that just like the administration which coined the phrase, the “global war on terrorism” is a joke.

Salim Hamdan who had been picked up by Afghan forces in November of 2001 riding in a car with four other alleged Al Qaeda members and two surface-to-air missiles. Hamdan was handed over to the U.S. military who sent him to join “the worst of the worst” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Because he was Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard, the administration was (wrongly) convinced he was part of Al Qaeda’s inner circle and decided that his would be the first case brought to trial in the new system of quasi-military “justice” the Pentagon had concocted. This is how the first American war crimes proceeding since World War II began and from the beginning, I should have known it was a sham.

The deck was stacked against Hamdan from day one. According to the administration, he had no legal rights – including those guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, he could be held without charges until the end of the “global war on terrorism,” he couldn’t have his case heard in a civilian court and instead would be subject to a newly created system over which the president rules like an emperor. Unlike a regular court proceeding, the new “military commissions” allowed secret testimony by secret witnesses to whom the defense may or may not have been given access. Also, evidence was admitted despite being obtained by what the administration calls “coercive measures,” but the rest of the world rightly refers to as “torture.” I guess they figured since they had Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard (an Al Qaeda member) in Afghanistan (a war zone) with missiles that could be used to kill Americans, it was an open-and-shut case. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

First the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have rights under the Geneva Conventions. Then it ruled that they have the right to challenge their detention in courts - in addition to striking down the military commissions the administration created to make an end-run around the justice system. But the President had Congress in his back pocket, so they passed a new military commissions law that took the Supreme Court’s ruling into consideration. After replacing the chief prosecutor (who quit after being told that these trials could not produce acquittals), Hamdan’s case was back on track.

Keeping in mind that all charges of providing material support for terrorism had been dropped a year earlier, he was on trial for conspiracy to support terrorism and for providing material support (himself) for Al Qaeda. The decision came down last week and Salim Hamdan was not convicted of conspiring to kill Americans in the African embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, or the hijackings of 9/11. Instead, Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard was found guilty of being Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard. Stop the presses.

The administration counted on our buying that “worst of the worst” crap when it came to the people held at Guantanamo. They couldn’t have counted on the first defendant becoming a sympathetic (if not pathetic) figure to the jury during the course of his prosecution. Hamdan is a man with a wife, two daughters, and a fourth-grade education who left Yemen to go to work for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan fro $200 a month. It became clear that Hamdan didn’t know everything his boss was up to and when he found out, he was visibly shaken. He basically said he thought bin Laden had gone crazy and that innocent people did not deserve to die. Some radical fundamentalist he turned out to be.

So after all was said and done, he was sentenced to 66 months and given credit for 61 months served. The two most telling statements came from the mastermind of the 9/11 hijackings who said Hamdan “was not fit to plan or execute” and from the judge in the case who said, “I hope the day comes that you are able to return to your wife and daughters in your country.” He then added the words “God willing.” In Arabic.