Bin Laden's driver to face military trial

Osama Bin Laden’s driver, who is being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, faces a trial by a military tribunal following a ruling by a federal appeals court in the US.

A three-judge panel in Washington DC ruled 3-0 against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose case was halted by a federal judge on grounds that the military commission procedures were unlawful.

“Congress authorised the military commission that will try Hamdan,” said the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention do not apply to al-Qaida and its members, so Hamdan does not have a right to enforce its provisions in court, the appeals judges said.

US District Judge James Robertson ruled last year that Hamdan could not be tried by a military commission until a competent tribunal determined that he was not a prisoner of war.

“We believe the military commission is such a tribunal,” said the appeals court.

President George Bush created the military commissions after the September 11 attacks, opening a legal channel for alleged al-Qaida terrorists and their associates to be tried for war crimes.

Hamdan’s lawyers said Bush violated the separation of powers in the Constitution when he established military commissions.

The court disagreed, saying Bush relied on Congress’s joint resolution authorising the use of force after the September 11 attacks, as well as two congressionally enacted laws.

“We think it no answer to say, as Hamdan does, that this case is different because Congress did not formally declare war,” said the decision by appeals court judge A. Raymond Randolph.

Congress authorised the president to use all necessary and appropriate force in the war on terrorism.

Two lawyers representing Hamdan, Neal Katyal and Navy Lt. Commander Charles D. Swift, said the appeals court ruling is “contrary to 200 years of constitutional law.” Katyal said Hamdan will seek further appeals.

“Today’s ruling places absolute trust in the president, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress, and long-standing treaties ratified by the Senate of the United States,” the two defence lawyers said in a statement.

Pentagon spokesman Maj Michael Shavers said officials were preparing a statement in response to the ruling.

Just 15 of the 520 detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been designated for such trials and only four have been charged.

The rest face indefinite detention, and the Bush administration refuses to grant any of the detainees prisoner-of-war status, a decision that has fuelled international criticism of the US.

Hamdan, a mechanic with a fourth-grade education, says he left his home country of Yemen looking for work and wound up in Afghanistan, working for bin Laden from 1997 until the US attack in Afghanistan in 2001.

Hamdan denies conspiring to engage in acts of terrorism and denies he was a member of al-Qaida.

Hamdan’s lawyers say he simply wanted to earn enough money to return to Yemen, buy his own vehicle and support his family as a driver.

The issue of military commissions has been eclipsed by alleged mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, putting the Bush administration on the defensive.