US:TESTIMONY has begun at Guantánamo Bay in the trial of Osama bin Laden's former driver, the first US military commission war crimes trial since the end of the second world war, writes Denis Staunton in Washington.
Military prosecutor Timothy Stone told the six uniformed jurors that Salim Ahmed Hamdan was bin Laden's personal bodyguard and that he transported weapons that were used to attack US forces in Afghanistan.
"You will not see evidence from the government that the accused ever fired a shot," said Lt Cmdr Stone.
"But what you will see is testimony regarding the accused's role in al-Qaeda, how he came to be a member of al-Qaeda and how he helped, facilitated and provided material support for that organisation." A Yemeni father of two, Mr Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and held at Bagram airbase before being taken to Guantánamo, where he has been held for six years. He is charged with participating in a terrorism conspiracy and faces life in prison if convicted.
Defence lawyer Harry Schneider said Mr Hamdan was simply a salaried employee who never joined al-Qaeda and did not share bin Laden's political views.
"He worked for wages, he didn't wage attacks on America. He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against Americal," Mr Schneider said.
Earlier, the military judge ruled that prosecutors could not introduce evidence obtained during "highly coercive" interrogations of Mr Hamdan in Afghanistan. However, Navy Captain Keith Allred rejected defence arguments that Mr Hamdan should have the right to avoid incriminating himself and that evidence obtained during interrogations at Guantánamo should also be disallowed.
Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, who resigned last year as the chief prosecutor for military commissions after he refused to introduce evidence obtained by coercion, said the judge's decision to exclude evidence obtained during coercive interrogations set an important precedent. Col Davis pointed out that other alleged terrorists had been subjected to harsher treatment than Mr Hamdan and that some confessions were made after suspects had been subjected to forms of torture such as waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning.
"If the judge has a problem with Hamdan, there are probably equal or greater problems with other cases," Col Davis told the Washington Post.