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WASHINGTON: Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, pleaded not guilty on Monday at the opening of the first trial before a special "war on terror" military tribunal at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said.
"The trial has started and he pleaded not guilty," Cynthia Smith, spokeswoman for the US Defense Department, told AFP.
Hamdan, from Yemen, is the first "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo to face a full-scale trial before the special tribunals since the prison camp at the remote naval base opened in late 2001.
Hamdan, whose trial is expected to last two weeks, faces charges of "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism," and could receive life imprisonment if convicted by a jury of military officers.
Opening arguments were scheduled for 8:30 a.m. EDT time early Tuesday (1230 GMT).
In a new courtroom built for the proceedings at the naval base not far from the prison, lawyers, journalists and human rights monitors are watching a trial that is seen as a test of the controversial tribunal system.
President George W. Bush's administration set up the special military commissions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, saying terror suspects could not be adequately prosecuted in regular courts.
But the military commissions were declared illegal in 2006 by the Supreme Court, only to be restored a few months later by the US Congress.
The commissions have faced a series of legal battles and hitches - including a June 2008 Supreme Court decision that granted foreign terror suspects captured abroad the right to challenge their detention in US courts - that have pushed back the opening of Hamdan's lawsuit, and perhaps others to come.
Australian national David Hicks was to face a trial in Guantanamo in 2007 but pleaded guilty at a hearing before it began.
After being held without trial for five years, Hicks admitted to providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal that allowed him to return to his country where he served the remainder of his sentence.
The indictment against Hamdan, who is about 40 years old, alleges that he met bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1996 and "ultimately became a bodyguard and personal driver" for the Al-Qaeda leader.
It alleges that Hamdan received training in the use of rifles, hand guns and machine guns in an Al-Qaeda camp and also "delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to Al-Qaeda members and associates."
Hamdan was transferred in 2002 to Guantanamo - where he has been spent much of his detention in isolation - and ordered tried by a military tribunal.
Lawyers for Hamdan say he is not implicated in any terrorist activity even though he served as the Al-Qaeda mastermind's driver.
They also argue that he was mistreated while in US custody and was subjected to sleep deprivation, including being awakened every hour by guards during a 50-day period in 2003.
The Bush administration has faced heated criticism from human rights groups for detaining prisoners for years at Guantanamo without giving them the right to defend themselves in court.
Of the 260 detainees currently in Guantanamo, only around 20 have been charged with a crime and the government plans to put only 60 to 80 of them on trial.
As the trial got underway, Attorney General Michael Mukasey called on lawmakers - and not federal judges - to resolve legal questions left open by the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June that affirmed Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US courts.
If Congress fails to act, federal courts might end up issuing conflicting rules for the more than 200 pending cases for detainees, Mukasey said.
- AFP/yb
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