The court at the U.S. naval detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Wednesday found Salim Hamdan, the personal driver for Osama bin Laden, guilty of supporting terrorism, though it acquitted him of conspiring with al-Qaida, Jane Sutton reported for Reuters.
In the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II, the Bush administration , in its third attempt to do so , won its conviction after nearly seven years. Hamdan was convicted of providing personal services to a known terrorist organization. Following appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. government dropped and refilled the charges twice before.
Hamdan was cleared of two counts of conspiring with al-Qaida to attack non-military personnel, destroy property and commit murder in violation of the laws of war. These were the only charges filed against Hamdan in the first attempt to bring him before the court.
“The travesty of this verdict now is that had the case gone to trial in 2004 he would have been acquitted of all the charges,” said Deputy Chief Defense Counsel Michael Berrigan.
The judge in the case, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, said several of the charges amounted to identical counts and ordered the court to sentence him to the one count, which he equated to “driving Mr. bin Laden around Afghanistan.”