Bin Laden driver 'knew 9/11 plane target'

A former driver for Osama bin Laden knew the target of the fourth hijacked plane on September 11 2001, his war crimes trial was told.

A prosecutor made the claim as he sought to undercut defence arguments that the Guantanamo prisoner was merely a low-level employee of the terrorist leader.

Salim Hamdan, the first prisoner to face a US war crimes trial since the Second World War, heard bin Laden say the plane was heading for "the dome", an apparent reference to the US Capitol, said US Navy Lt Cmdr Timothy Stone.

The plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field as passengers overcame the hijackers.

"Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused knew," Lt Cmdr Stone told the jury of six US military officers in his opening statement at the trial at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Hamdan is charged with conspiracy and aiding terrorism. The defence says the prisoner, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, was merely a driver for bin Laden and had no significant role in al-Qaida's terrorist attacks.

"The evidence is that he worked for wages, he didn't wage attacks on America," Harry Schneider, one of Hamdan's civilian defence lawyers, told the jury.

"He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America."

Prosecutors say that as bin Laden's personal driver, he helped the al-Qaida leader evade US retribution after the September 11 attacks and transport weapons for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

To support that claim, prosecutors called as their first witness a US special forces soldier who described finding two surface-to-air missiles in the car Hamdan was driving when Afghan forces captured him in November 2001.

A second American military officer, identified only as "Sgt Major A", said soldiers also found in Hamdan's car an al-Qaida weapons manual and a permit with an Arabic greeting that the Taliban issued to al-Qaida members to carry weapons in Afghanistan.

"You will not see evidence from the government that the accused ever fired a shot," Lt Cmdr Stone said. "But what you will see is testimony regarding the accused's role in al-Qaida, how he became a member of al-Qaida and how he helped, facilitated and provided material support for that organisation."

An FBI agent who researched the command structure of al-Qaida, Ali Soufan, said Hamdan reported for some duties to the head of a security unit equivalent to the US Secret Service.

"The people who are around bin Laden have to be people who are looked into and trusted," he said. "They can't be bought, they are true believers in the cause."

Mr Soufan, a native Arabic speaker, is expected to give evidence today about a series of interrogations he conducted with Hamdan in Guantanamo in 2002.

Hamdan faces a maximum life sentence if convicted. The trial is expected to take three to four weeks. The US says it plans to prosecute about 80 prisoners at Guantanamo.