Low Level Driver Convicted Of Terror Charges While Bin
Laden's Senior Body Guard Was Let Go
Hamdan's lawyers dismiss US terror trial as unfair
Steve
Watson Infowars.net
Wednesday, August 6,
2008
Sentencing will be passed down later today on Salim Hamdan, a
man described by defense attorneys and witnesses as a low level
driver who knew nothing of Al Qaeda. The driver will face life
imprisonment while it was revealed last week that Osama Bin Laden's
most senior bodyguard was simply let go from the prison at Guantánamo
Bay.
A jury of six military officers at Guantanamo Bay
reached a split verdict Wednesday in the war crimes trial of a
former driver for Osama bin Laden, clearing him of some charges
but convicting him of others that could send him to prison for
life, reports
AP.
The so called "mastermind of 9/11" Khalid
Sheik Mohammed dismissed
Hamdan in written testimony as a mere chauffeur "not
fit to plan or execute".
U.S. authorities do not even claim that the driver
and sometime mechanic, who earned a mere $200 a month, was a major
terror figure. But prosecutors alleged that he carried weapons
used by Al Qaeda and helped to spirit Bin Laden out of Afghanistan
after the fall of the Taliban.
The trial of Hamdan, the first Guantanamo war crimes
trial, has been used as a show piece to promote the virtues of
the Bush cabal's "war on terror".
Last
week we revealed
that a Pentagon produced documentary on Al Qaeda,
which was presented as evidence at the trial, was created by a
terrorism consultant who has previously attempted to pass off
Pentagon released propaganda as directly released by Al Qaeda.
Furthermore, human rights groups have slammed the
trial as proof that the tribunal system should be scrapped in
favor of regular civilian or military courts, saying dubious interrogations
were allowed as evidence.
(Article continues below)
New York-based Human Rights Watch said that "statements
made at Guantanamo were allowed into evidence, despite reports
that Hamdan had been subject to extensive sleep deprivation, sexual
harassment, and other abuse."
Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed defense attorneys told
reporters the trial was "lacking in certain fundamental rights
that would be available in any other American courtroom"
and admitted that the tribunal system's rules seemed designed
to achieve convictions.
"I don't know if the panel can render fair what has already
happened," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer told
reporters as the jury deliberated.
The status of this trial as a complete kangaroo court show piece
is compounded by revelations last week that soon after Hamdan
arrived at the Guantánamo prison in 2002, he told interrogators
the identity of the Osama Bin Laden's most senior bodyguard, then
a fellow prison-camp detainee, only to subsequently see the man
released by the prison-camp interrogators.
Michael St. Ours, an agent with the Naval Criminal Intelligence
Service (NCIS), provided the first tidbit. He testified for
the prosecution that his job as a prison-camps interrogator
in May 2002 was to find and focus on the bodyguards among the
detainees.
Hamdan helped identify 30 of them, 10 percent of the roughly
300 detainees then held here. They had just been transferred
to Camp Delta from the crude compound called Camp X-Ray, and
U.S. intelligence was trying to unmask all of them.
Chief among them was Casablanca-born Abdallah Tabarak, then
47, described by St. Ours as "a hard individual,"
and, thanks to Hamdan, "the head bodyguard of all the bodyguards."
St. Ours said he was eager to speak with Tabarak. But the Moroccan
was "uncooperative," and St. Ours moved on to other
intelligence jobs — and never learned what became of him.
On cross-examination, Hamdan defense attorney Harry Schneider,
of Seattle, dropped a bombshell: "Would it surprise you
to learn he was released without ever being charged?"
St. Ours looked stunned.
"Yeah," he said.
This information should not come as such of a shock to Infowars
readers however, as we have persistently documented how so called
"Al Qaeda" prisoners miraculously and routinely "escape"
from maximum security prisons all over the world or are allowed
to walk away from attacks they are said to have perpetrated.
Al Qaeda's top brass never ended up at guantanamo because they
were all
flown out on US planes in a deal done with Pakistan
in late 2001 as the Afghanistan invasion began. This was later
verified and passed off as just another "mistake". Watch
Veteran reporter Sy Hersh describe these events:
The detention facilities at Guantanamo bay are a media showcase,
nothing more than a public relations scam designed to give us
a glimpse of "the new rules of war". We are slowly being
acclimatized to torture and imprisonment without fair trial. These
things are now even being implemented within our own laws.
The reality of the situation with Salim Hamdan is that he was
the perfect patsy for the Pentagon and the Bush cabal to make
a show piece out of to promote the war on terror. While so called
"high-value"
terrorism suspects (read intelligence assets and
go betweens) are kept locked behind closed doors and away from
the scrutiny of the media, Hamdan was a low level know-nothing,
thus there was no risk he could reveal anything of any significance
regarding Al Qaeda, which we have
consistently exposed as a creation of the intelligence
agencies.
Sentencing will be passed down later today on Salim Hamdan, a
man described by defense attorneys and witnesses as a low level
driver who knew nothing of Al Qaeda. The driver will face life
imprisonment while it was revealed last week that Osama Bin Laden's
most senior bodyguard was simply let go from the prison at Guantánamo
Bay.
