Bin Laden's Driver Pleads Not Guilty

(CBS/ AP)  The first Guantanamo war crimes trial began Monday with a not guilty plea from a former driver and alleged bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, entered the plea through his lawyer at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

He is the first prisoner to face a U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.

Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, called a jury pool of American military officers into the courtroom and began reading them instructions. A minimum of five of the 13 officers must be selected for the trial.

Hamdan, a Yemeni, wore a khaki prison jumpsuit to the courtroom. The flowing white robe and headdress he wore at pretrial hearings was not cleaned in time for his trial, said Charles Swift, one of his civilian attorneys.

For months his lawyers fought to delay the trial, arguing that military rules don't allow for a fair defense, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports.

"These cases are too important to do incorrectly at the beginning," said Swift. "The importance is to get it right the first time."

Lawyers argue that enemy combatants like Hamdan, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others may not have complete access to witnesses or classified information that may help their defense. And questionable evidence, produced by harsh interrogations, may be used against them.

The legal advisor to the Military Commissions rejects the concerns, Orr reports.

"I would say that the rights we're providing to these accused in these cases are unprecedented in the history of warfare," said Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartman.

The trial is expected to take three to four weeks, with testimony from nearly two dozen Pentagon witnesses.

Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001, allegedly with two surface-to-air missiles in the car. But his lawyers say he was merely a low-level driver and mechanic without any role in the al Qaeda conspiracy against the United States.

Hamdan was taken to Guantanamo in May 2002 and selected as one of the first inmates to face prosecution. His case has created repeated legal obstacles for the Pentagon including a Supreme Court ruling that struck down an earlier version of the tribunal system.

Allred began the proceedings Monday by indicating that he would not allow the government to use some of the evidence interrogators obtained from Hamdan during his detention in Afghanistan. Defense lawyers have argued those statements were tainted by "coercive" techniques and the fact that interrogators did not advise him of a right against self-incrimination.

Defense attorneys, who say Hamdan was merely a low-level bin Laden employee, have refused to say whether they are in negotiations over a possible guilty plea.

Julia Hall, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch's counterterrorism program, said Hamdan would not be a likely candidate for a plea deal because his case appears simple in comparison with others pending before the first U.S. war-crime tribunals since World War II.

"He has alleged direct associations with Osama bin Laden, he was not held in secret detention, and a federal court judge has ruled the commission can go forward," she said. "It seems obvious why he is a person that the government would want to test drive the military commissions on."

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey wants Congress to help figure out how to give Guantanamo Bay terror detainees their day in U.S. civilian courts.

A Supreme Court ruling last month "stopped well short" of detailing how foreign suspects will be allowed to challenge their detention, Mukasey said in draft excerpts of a speech he was to deliver Monday morning.

"In other words, the Supreme Court left many significant questions open," Mukasey said in the excerpts that were obtained by The Associated Press.

He called it "well within the historic role and competence of Congress and the executive branch to attempt to resolve them." Mukasey was speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think-tank.

At issue is the June 12 ruling that struck down a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that denied Guantanamo detainees the right to file petitions of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is a centuries-old legal principle, enshrined in the Constitution, that allows courts to determine whether a prisoner is being held illegally.

Mukasey wants lawmakers - and not federal district judges - to set the rules. It's unclear at best whether Congress could act by then, and any new laws setting such standards likely would be snarled in appeals for years.

Among the issues to be sorted out is how civilian judges might be allowed to review evidence against the prisoners. The Justice Department has fought for years to limit judicial review of evidence in these cases.

Mukasey noted that the Supreme Court acknowledged the hearings "could raise serious national security issues."

"The court recognized, and with good reason, that certain accommodations must be made to reduce the burden habeas corpus proceedings will place on the military and to protect sources and methods of intelligence gathering," Mukasey said.

Twenty Guantanamo detainees are facing charges, including five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks who were transferred here from secret CIA prisons in 2006. Prosecutors intend to charge as many as 80 inmates at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

[feelfree4u]

Re: "Bin Laden''s Driver Pleads Not Guilty"

My guess is that he plead not guilty, because he''s not.

We have already seen that most, if not all, Bush regime torture and prison victims have committed no crime.

[feelfree4u]

michaelt302,

Have you abandoned all hope of ever being able to hold your own in a discussion?

I don''t blame you.

It is clearly not your strong suit.

It''s fun to watch your frantic and hateful screeching spew forth in an open forum.

You look to be in your final throes.

Tough luck, Champ.

[feeelfree4u]

Read and learn:
www.jihadwatch.org
www.thereligionofpeace.com
www.terrorismawareness.org
www.frontpagemag.com

[feeelfree4u]

Good rules for Jihadists and Islamist apologists:
How about combating jihadism with this simple five-point plan:
1. Exhort Muslims in the West to focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Call upon Muslims in the West to renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any manifestation of Islamic supremacism, including any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.
4. Call upon Muslims to begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Call upon them to work actively with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

[feeelfree4u]

We cannot see what we do not understand. Our education system is bankrupt at all levels. Our universities do not prepare our young minds to see anything bad about Islam. Here in Nashville at Vanderbilt University you can get a degree in Islamic Studies and never read the life of Mohammed%u2014and never read the entire Koran. You study Sufi poetry, Islamic art and Islamic history viewed as a glorious triumph. No kafirs suffer in this program and there is no history of Jew, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist suffering under Islamic rule for the past 1,400 years. A graduate from this program then goes out into the world professionally trained to be an apologist for Islam, a dhimmi. And this program is standard at all schools, not just Vanderbilt.

All of our textbooks teach a CAIR approved history and doctrine of Islam. All of the young minds are trained to never see any wrong in Islam and to blame all the faults of Islam on us.

[feeelfree4u]

The media only has a concern for white oppression and white evil. If the source of evil is non-white and non-Christian, they don%u2019t care. Our Leftist media is forcing us to fight this ideological struggle with both hands tied behind our backs. To them, saying anything negative about other countries or cultures is not telling the truth, it is racism. To them, portraying America%u2019s values and accomplishments in a positive light is propaganda %u2013 and God forbid they indulge in anything so base as pro-American propaganda.

Another aspect of Leftist thought is that there is no absolute morality. Everything is relative, every kind of behavior and belief should be tolerated, and therefore the American system isn%u2019t better than any other. How can we engage in a battle of ideologies when you see all ways of life %u2013 even those that preach an end to tolerance and an end to intellectual freedom %u2013 as acceptable? And as we can see in the Obama campaign, you can talk about change as long as you serve the same menu of old ideas with a new smile.

[feelfree4u]

Look at the photograph of this Bush regime torture victim.

If Bush claims that he is guilty of something, then we can be certain that he was never any threat to anyone.

Bush and Cheney remain free while their countless victims continue to suffer.

This will not be remembered as a time to be proud of for the U.S.

Those responsible must be held to account.

[feeelfree4u]

The Left and Islam share many of the same values. Both deny that individuals have a personal ethic. A central authority should control all things. Both insult and denigrate their opponents and see themselves as victors in the movement of history. Both hate the native cultures and individual efforts.

The mindset of the Leftist is one of deliberate ignorance. I was a Leftist, a bleeding heart liberal until a few years ago. I came from a Marxist family in India. The Left, by its silence on the issue of radical Islam, has betrayed its own professed ideals, if it has any.

The fight against Political Islam should have been led by the liberal intellectuals in our universities, but instead they deliberately and systematically support a seventh century totalitarian ideology that negates all forms of rational thinking, intellectual pursuit, and pluralism - the very ideals which are supposed to be central to the philosophy of the Left.

The Liberals have become the lackeys of Islamic imperialism in their words and deeds. They fail to mention the 1,400 years of Jihadists'' terror in this world. How can we cry for the genocide in Darfur and ignore the cause?

[feeelfree4u]

Much of what we see today is proof of the legal inequalities that are built into Sharia law. Sharia is a set of laws designed to apply not just to Mulsims, but to non-Muslims as well. Everyone, believer and kafir alike, is supposed to live a life based upon Mohammed. However, kafirs %u2013 those who do not believe %u2013 are given distinctly different treatment than believers.

In America, we believe that all human beings are created equal, and that all human beings possess certain natural rights; our entire Constitution is just a logical extension of that one idea. To us, Muslims are humans just like everyone else, and therefore they should have the same legal rights as everyone else. Sharia law, on the other hand, is not based on logic or a belief in natural equality. It is based on religious customs, and part of its design is to elevate believers over non-believers.

Yet, we never bring up this inequality and lack of freedom under Muslim rule. We never point out Islam%u2019s long history of destroying or oppressing other cultures. We never remember the suffering of non-Muslims in Muslim nations. We never teach that Turkey was once Christian, or that Islamic jihad has reduced Hindustani culture to half of what it once was. Muslim groups often like to point to Christians as aggressors, citing the Crusades of the Dark Ages, but the West remains silent about people being oppressed in the Middle East today, right now.

[feeelfree4u]

CAIR is a direct manifestation of Mohammed%u2019s Sunna and jihad. CAIR is actually just one part of Islam%u2019s strategy to annihilate the Western culture. It is far more dangerous than any Mohammed Atta or any other jihadists.

Lies and deceit are CAIR%u2019s stock-in-trade. They claim to be akin to a %u201CMuslim NAACP,%u201D but everyone from the Department of Homeland Security, to FBI counterterrorism chiefs, to moderate American Muslims recognizes the extreme rhetoric that CAIR endorses. At least five of CAIR%u2019s board members and employees have been linked to terrorism-related activities. They are fifth columnists, preying upon our values of tolerance and multiculturalism.

But CAIR is just one of an untold number of Islamic organizations in our government and university centers. People forget that Mohammed%u2019s last words were to keep giving the money to kafir ambassadors and that is what Islam is doing in Washington, DC. Capitol Hill is awash in Saudi money and our dhimmi political types cannot get enough of it.