Hit the dome

Bin Laden's driver could be saved by procedural violations

Former FBI agent Ali Soufan has reduced the chances of acquittal for the former driver of number one terrorist Osama Bin Laden . Salim Ahmad Hamdan, 37, is being tried by a six-officer military tribunal at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The Yemeni man is charged with “conspiracy to support terrorism,” which carries a life sentence. The defendant admitted that from 1997 to 2001 he worked for Bin Laden for $200 a month, but denies involvement in al-Qaeda activities. According to the lawyers, their client was a “blind executor of someone else’s orders,” and therefore cannot be held responsible for conspiracies that threatened US interests.

But yesterday Soufan, as a prosecution witness, testified about the “close proximity” of the defendant and Bin Laden. The Americans arrested Hamdan in Afghanistan in November 2001 after two anti-aircraft missiles were found in the car he was driving. The interrogations that followed in prison were apparently conducted by the Arabic-speaking Soufan, who now claims that he was able to “talk” the arrested person. He allegedly told the agent that he, as the driver of the Saudi Bin Laden, was even able to overhear his conversation with the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two person in al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden, pointing to the covers of recent magazines published after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, remarked: “I did not expect the operation to be so successful. I thought up to 1.5 thousand people would be killed (over 3 thousand people died in the terrorist attacks - Ed. ). And if they (the Americans - Ed. ) had not shot down the fourth plane (which fell in Pennsylvania - Ed. ), it would have hit the dome.” Soufan suggested that they were talking about the dome of the Capitol or the White House in Washington.

Hamdan, the father of two children, also told a former FBI agent (Sufan left this department in 2005) how Bin Laden gave him orders to go to Yemen and find there “a woman from a God-fearing family,” and when he returned with his wife, the patron arranged for him to their honor is a feast. Some interrogations were recorded on video, but journalists do not know which ones. Soufan said the defendant helped Osama bin Laden and one of his sons escape to safety after an active search for him began in Afghanistan in 2001. In the photographs shown to him, the driver identified the leaders of al-Qaeda and the suicide bomber who attacked the American destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2002. In other photos, Hamdan poses next to Bin Laden, holding a light machine gun.

Nevertheless, about 300 European politicians stood up for the rights of Hamdan, who was imprisoned at the American Guantanamo base in May 2002. Defenders say that the driver was a small pawn and earned money, but could not refuse the boss’s orders, “fearing for his life.”

But military judge James Robertson rejected the lawyers' plea, saying their client was challenging the validity of the trial and protesting innocence. There are other procedural violations - for example, no one explained to the defendant that his testimony could be used against him. And during some interrogations, Hamdan sat shackled in front of a lamp, shining a bright light in his face, after which the guards took him away, putting a bag over his head. During the trial, which will last another three weeks, about two dozen more witnesses will be heard.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN