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Five months in jail for driving Mr. bin Laden? Only in America! Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur, recently won an appallingly light sentence for aiding al-Qaeda. Hamdan’s apologists call him a hapless, innocent motorist. If so, anyone steering a bank-job getaway car is “just a driver.” Hamdan is no naïf. He is a camp-trained al-Qaeda member who a Guantanamo military tribunal convicted of giving “material support” to America’s chief enemy in the War on Terror. Hamdan transported weapons (including two shoulder-launched missiles with which he was caught), drove and hid bin Laden, and guarded this mass murderer with...

Mr. Hamdan, We're Ready For Your Closeup Aug. 17, 2008(CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.Of course George Clooney’s production company has just purchased the rights to a book written about Salim Hamdan, the most famous mechanic and driver in the history of the world. The sensitive star knows a good story when he sees one, and Hamdan’s story (the final chapters of which have yet to be written) over the past six years surely ranks as one of the best of the decade. Hamdan drove Osama bin Laden for a while (imaging having that...

THE DISGUSTING ['APPEASEMENT'] SONG BY NPRAugust 11, 2008 What is it about the bad guys that provoke "compassion" from NPR type of journalists? Regarding the case against Bin Laden's driver: Salim Hamdan, though only having a short time to serve under the current verdict, he still might be held indefinitely according the Bush's administration as an 'enemy combatant', John Mcchesni of NPR 'lamented' that the jury will be very disappointed if that happens. Juror Questions U.S. Pursuit Of Salim Hamdan : NPR's John McChesney has this exclusive interview ... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93483533 Rhetorical question, Does Mr. Michesni think that these type of...

Last week saw three human rights episodes play out in Russia, China and the United States. These events show us how America stacks up against the rest of the world. This past week the world saw the resurgent danger of the old Soviet Union in the modern Russian Federation. Russian military forces invaded the sovereign neighboring nation of Georgia. Although Russia claims to be aiding people in the disputed Georgian province of South Ossetia, the reality is that covert Russian agents have been fomenting upheaval, and Russia had been moving forces into place for this invasion. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin...

Salim Hamdan was just sentenced to five and half years for chauffeuring Osama bin Laden through McDonald’s drive-thrus, or whatever the Afghani equivalent is, while he plotted the 9/11 attacks. Hamdan has been holed up in Guantanamo Bay for over five years without a trial, so he’s actually eligible for release in five months, although Bush & Co. have threatened to hold him indefinitely after he has served him time. The media has been all over the story because 1) Not every programming minute can be filled by the Olympics; and 2) It potentially sets a precedent for suspected terrorists...

George Clooney, one of Hollywood's most prominent backers of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president, has bought the movie rights to tell the story of Osama bin Laden's driver. According to the report in the Guardian, the book sympathetically portrays Hamdan and his Navy lawyer, Charles Swift, as the little guys up against the powerful forces of the United States government. Clooney, who is reportedly offering policy and speaking advice plus also helping Obama raise money from within the wealthy, liberal Hollywood community, is said to covet the role of Swift for himself.

An officer who served on the Guantánamo Bay military jury that convicted Salim Hamdan of providing material support for terrorism and sentenced to five months imprisonment on top of 61 months he has already spent in confinement at the military base awaiting trial tells The Wall Street Journal that the evidence against Osama bin Laden's former driver “simply didn't support prosecutors' depiction of a hard-core al Qaeda terrorist who hates America and its way of life” and that “along the spectrum” of terrorist activity, Hamdan fell on the “less significant end.”According to The Journal, this juror also insisted that the...

Hollywood A-lister George Clooney is planning to bring the story of Osama bin Laden's driver to the big screen. The actor's production company, Smokehouse, has bought the rights to a book about Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, according to The Observer newspaper. The Challenge by journalist Jonathan Mahler chronicles Hamdan's capture and imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay and his subsequent trial, defended by a US navy lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Charles Swift. Hamdan, from Yemen, was sentenced last week to 5 1/2 years in jail. It was the first sentence handed down to a Guantanamo Bay detainee by a U.S. military tribunal....

George Clooney, already one of Hollywood's leading liberal voices, has embarked on what may be one of his most controversial projects: the story of Osama bin Laden's driver. Clooney's production company, Smokehouse, has bought the rights to a book about Salim Hamdan, an inmate at Guantánamo Bay who last week was sentenced to jail for his role in helping the al-Qaeda leader. The book, The Challenge, is by journalist Jonathan Mahler and tells the story of Hamdan's capture and trial, defended by a US navy lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift. It has had a big critical success. Last week Yemen-born...

The verdict in the first war crimes trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is in: One poorly educated Yemeni, with an impish sense of humor and two little girls, is guilty of supporting terrorism by driving Osama bin Laden. With credit for time served, the sentence is no more than five months. The verdict and the five-and-a-half-year sentence may not have been as severe as the government had hoped for, but it was a green light for a tribunal that the Pentagon plans to use to prosecute as many as 80 detainees, including five men charged as the plotters and coordinators...

I am a former soldier, not a lawyer. I view the recent majority rulings of our Supreme Court concerning unlawful combatants such as in Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene as adding, not detracting, to the bloody chaos of war. In addition, the entire debate about using intelligence as evidence against the unlawful combatants, even that which was derived by coercive techniques, is flawed. Perhaps we should not pull the wings off flies like Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during this War on Terror but misery should be an unlawful combatants only lot in life. Beyond extending our Constitution...

It is the world terror roundup. Bill Roggio from LWJ checks in to examine Hamdan, Roundups of High Value Targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, China and Russia/Georgia.

In an astounding finale to the first military-commission trial, Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s personal aide, has been sentenced by a military commission to five-and-a-half years in prison — five-and-a-half years — upon conviction for the war crime of providing material support to al-Qaeda.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7, 2008 – The first detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to have his case brought to trial was sentenced today by a military panel there to 66 months in prison for providing material support to terrorism. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who served as Osama bin Laden’s driver, was tried and sentenced under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Following a two-week trial, a military jury yesterday found Hamdan guilty of providing material support to terrorism, but not of the more serious charge of conspiracy. Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the military judge, sentenced him to 66 months confinement but...

Update: After all the MSM ranting of an unfair trial, Hamdan gets 66 months including five years and a month time already served. As soon as Salim Ahmed Hamdan was convicted Wednesday, July 6, there were several things expected

A military jury gave Osama bin Laden's driver a stunningly lenient sentence on Thursday, making him eligible for release in just five months despite the prosecutors' request for a sentence tough enough to frighten terrorists around the globe.

The military tribunal verdict convicting Salim Hamdan of providing material support to terrorism was eminently just. The guy was, after all, Osama Bin Laden's driver, and he was, after all, arrested with two surface-to-air missiles in the back of his car. And there was, after all, the video of a 1998 Al Qaeda news conference for Pakistani journalists that at one point showed Hamdan with a machine gun and at another juncture captured him smiling at Bin Laden. And there were, after all, the undisputed facts that Hamdan fell in with Bin Laden in 1996 and worked with him through...

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A panel of six military officers convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of one of two war crimes charges on Wednesday but acquitted him of the other, completing the first military commission trial here and the first conducted by the United States since the aftermath of World War II.

The first al-Qaida suspect charged at Guantánamo was today found guilty of aiding terrorism at a specially convened tribunal. These military commissions, however, have been highly controversial. Do you believe justice is being done at Camp Justice?

Can post link only. Your gag reflex is your responsibility.

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain issued the following statement on today's verdict in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan: "I welcome today's guilty verdict in the first trial held under the Military Commissions Act (MCA). This process of bringing terrorists to justice has been too long delayed, but I'm encouraged that it is finally moving forward. I supported that legislation, which was a good-faith effort by Congress to meet the Supreme Court's direction to establish a process to bring terrorist detainees to trial. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a trusted confidante of Osama Bin Laden, was provided a full hearing...

Why is it, that the impression the media leaves me with, is that Hamdan is "just a driver" and a victim of circumstances? Just another tragic pawn and casualty in the illegal and immoral war instigated by the imperialistic, oil-grubbing, human-rights/U.S. Constitution-violating Bush regime? Well, he's been found guilty of supporting terrorism, but acquitted on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terror. Anyway... Jonathan Mahler writing last Sunday for the NYTimes Magazine: The men in the dock might very well be war criminals, the argument goes, but what about the policy makers and interrogators who violated their rights...

The following is a statement by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the Military Commission ’s guilty verdict in the Salim Hamdan case. “I commend the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances. They and all our Armed Forces continue to serve this country with valor in the fight against terrorism. That the Hamdan trial — the first military commission trial with a guilty verdict since 9/11 — took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

A military jury convicted Salim Hamdan on charges of providing material support to terrorism at his hearing at Guantanamo Bay. Hamdan was acquitted on additional charges of conspiring with al Qaeda to commit war crimes. The US military accused him of transporting missiles for al Qaeda and helping Bin Laden escape US authorities following the September 11 attacks by driving him around Afghanistan. Hamdan's defence team said he was merely a low-level Bin Laden employee. The Yemeni, who now faces a maximum life sentence, held his head in his hands and wept at the defence table. The White House welcomed...

Gitmo Tribunal Has Reached Verdict in Bin Laden-Driver Case

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A potential mistrial was avoided in the first Guantanamo trial on Tuesday when the U.S. military judge ruled it was too late to challenge his war crimes instructions to the jury deliberating the case of Osama bin Laden's driver. But the judge acknowledged he may have erred and prosecutors sought clarification on the law that they said could affect plans to try up to 80 more Guantanamo prisoners.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center said Saturday he has been researching new potential accommodations for Osama bin Laden's driver, who could be held here indefinitely regardless of the verdict at his war crimes trial. A jury of American military officers is expected to begin deliberations Monday in the case of Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni who faces a maximum life sentence on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. Even if he is found innocent, he may not leave this U.S. Navy base. The military retains the right to hold those considered to...

Alleged 9/11 Architect (KSM) Says bin Laden's Driver Was 'Not a Soldier'

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden wanted to introduce himself to America with an ABC television interview months before al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, the interviewer testified on Tuesday. Former ABC correspondent John Miller, testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, also recalled comparing bin Laden with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as he made small talk during filming of the May 28, 1998, interview at an Afghanistan mountain hideout. It was a rare opportunity for an American journalist, and Miller detailed a movie-thriller route to get to bin Laden, complete with...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — In his seventh of month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden's driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America's fault that the al Qaida leader was alive. The message was, ''You had these opportunities, America. You didn't do anything,'' FBI agent George Crouch Jr. testified Friday at Salim Hamdan's war crimes trial. The United States could have killed bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, before he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Hamdan told his interrogators. They could have killed him after al Qaida's 1998 twin bombings at the U.S. Embassy bombings in...

Some interesting testimony from an FBI interrogator in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 23 — Osama bin Laden’s driver witnessed the al-Qaeda leader being briefed on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and overheard him express satisfaction that the death toll had exceeded expectations, an FBI interrogator testified Wednesday. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, now held at the U.S. military prison here, had said under questioning six years ago that bin Laden was “happy about the results� of the terrorist strikes because he had expected “only� 1,000 to 1,500 people to...

Excerpt - GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, July 24 (Reuters) - A driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday. "Our policy at the time was not to read Miranda rights," FBI special agent Robert Fuller said in testimony at the U.S. military commission trial of Salim Hamdan on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Fuller was referring to the Miranda v. Arizona U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1966, which held that potential criminal suspects in custody...

Bin Laden happy with September 11 toll, war court told Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:58pm EDT By Jim Loney GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver overheard the al Qaeda leader saying he was happy about the death toll in the September 11 attacks and thought the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down, according to one of the driver's interrogators. The evidence by Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, was meant to support the case by prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunal that the driver, Salim Hamdan, was close to...

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday in an attempt to draw a link between Salim Hamdan and the al Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

Some Evidence Excluded As War Trial Opens 'highly coercive' interrogations

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ruled to allow the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial to move forward, blocking an appeal by lawyers for Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Usama bin Laden.

A former drive of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, has claimed that he was sexually humiliated and groped by a touchy-feely female interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay prison. According to the New York Post, a lawyer representing Salim Ahmed Hamdan, said the woman put her hand on his thigh and behaved in an "improper" way that made him uncomfortable as a Muslim. "She came very close with her whole body toward me," he testified through an interpreter. "I couldn't do anything." Hamdan, a 37-year-old Yemeni, became visibly disturbed when his lawyer asked him about the female interrogator. He refused...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 15 --Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged al-Qaeda driver who faces an historic military trial next week, testified Tuesday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using sexually suggestive behavior that was offensive to him. Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, told a military court conducting a pretrial hearing that during questioning in 2002 a woman interrogator "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers.'' "Did she touch your thigh?," asked Hamdan's lawyer, Charles Swift. "Yes...I said to...

In the aftermath of the bulldozer attack in downtown Jerusalem, Zuhier Hamdan, one of the mukhtars of the Jerusalem Arab village of Sur Bahir, home to the terrorist, was widely interviewed in the press. As reporters asked Hamdan for his reaction to the attack, I was reminded of the interview I conducted five years ago with the Israel-friendly village leader.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Osama bin Laden's former driver may not go on trial this summer at Guantanamo after all. The military lawyer for Salim Hamdan says the Supreme Court ruling on the rights of Guantanamo prisoners is likely to at least delay the Yemeni's war crimes trial. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer told The Associated Press he will file a motion to dismiss the war crimes charges against Hamdan based on the court's finding that Guantanamo prisoners have constitutional rights. The defense lawyer said Wednesday he will argue that Hamdan was denied his constitutional right to a speedy...

Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense. But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks,...

US military kills al-Qaida leader By PATRICK QUINN, Associate Press Writer BAGHDAD - A U.S. military helicopter fired a guided missile to kill a wanted al-Qaida in Iraq leader from Saudi Arabia who was responsible for the bombing deaths of five American soldiers, a spokesman said Sunday. U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said Jar Allah, also known as Abu Yasir al-Saudi, and another Saudi known only as Hamdan, were both killed Wednesday in Mosul. According to the military, al-Saudi conducted numerous attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces, including a Jan. 28 bomb attack that killed the five U.S. soldiers....

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Military judges dismissed charges Monday against a Guantanamo detainee accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden and another who allegedly killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan , throwing up roadblocks to the Bush administration‘s attempt to try terror suspects in military courts. Hamdan is "not subject to this commission" under legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last year, said Navy Capt. Keith Allred, Hamdan‘s military judge, Monday evening. Hamdan is accused of chauffeuring bin Laden and being the al-Qaida chief‘s bodyguard. The new Military Commissions Act, written to establish military trials after...

The U.S. military prepared new charges Friday against three of the best-known detainees at Guantanamo Bay — a key step toward resuming the military tribunals for terrorism suspects that were halted by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. Authorities drafted new charges — including murder, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism — against Canadian Omar Khadr, Australian David Hicks and Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis, chief prosecutor in the Guantanamo war crimes trials. Under military rules, the charges are not considered formally filed against the detainees until they are approved by a U.S....

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military's "up or out" promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander. He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a...

The recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in a feat of tortuous logic and ignoring the Political Question Doctrine, has created Geneva Convention protections for international terrorists, something few students of international humanitarian law anticipated, certainly few in uniform ever contemplated. This has detrimental and broad implication for the specific applicability of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the two “Protocols Additional of 1977” as they relate not only to the protection of combatants and terrorists, as appears to be the focus of current national debate, but more importantly to the protection and safeguarding of civilians, indeed to the...

FBI agents yesterday raided the suburban Detroit headquarters of LIFE for Relief and Development (LRD), the largest Islamic charity in the country. I first wrote about the group for The Post in 2003. Back then, FBI Director Robert Mueller was set to give an award to Imad Hamad, who heads the Midwest chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). But, after my Post article pointed out that Hamad was a subject in over a dozen terrorism-related investigations, the FBI revoked the award. One of those investigations concerned Hamad's close ties to LRD. Both the FBI and the then-U.S. Customs...

No one dedicated to federalist principles and the rule of law (least of all, political conservatives) should yield to the temptation to elevate short-term political objectives over concern for the preservation of timeless Constitutional principles. Unfortunately, in the debate on military tribunals, this is precisely what has happened. Some commentators, seeking to champion the Administration’s military tribunal bill, have, in my view, abandoned principle for expediency, and have additionally introduced a tone into the debate that has no place therein. For example, in a recent National Review Online article urging enactment of the President’s bill, Andrew McCarthy, a former federal...

Mosad fails to kill Hamas chief in Syria: sources GAZA, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- The external Israeli security intelligence service, better know as Mosad, has failed to assassinate Damascus-based Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal, sources in the movement revealed Wednesday. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, were quoted bya Palestinian independent news agency as saying that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) knew about the Israeli attempt to kill Meshaal through a Western intelligence security service. They added that several Mosad agents arrived in Damascus in mid-July during the Israeli military offensives on Lebanon, disguising as foreign relief volunteers...