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 fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS