Guantanamo Detainee Switches Wardrobe and Hearing Participation

Guantanamo/Detainees

Guantanamo Detainee Switches Wardrobe and Hearing Participation

Posted Apr 30, 2008, 10:10 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee who maintains he was nothing more than a driver for Osama bin Laden, told a military judge yesterday that he will boycott the proceedings.

Hamdan said the military commission process is a sham and there are too few humanitarian rights at Guantanamo, the Washington Post reports.

Earlier in the hearing, Hamdan had worn a sports coat and a flowing white robe, but on Tuesday he signaled something was different when he showed up in his prison uniform, report the Post and the New York Times.

“There is no such thing as justice here,” Hamdan said. "I would like the law, I would like justice. Nothing else. Just try me with the law and with justice."

Hamdan got some support from the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo on Monday. The former prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis, testified that Pentagon officials pressured him to hurry cases along and to prosecute high-profile detainees first for “strategic political value.”

The Times story said the judge, Capt. Keith Allred, tried to persuade Hamdan to change his mind about a boycott. “I think you should have great faith in American law,” Allred said, noting that the detainee’s U.S. Supreme Court case had prompted a change in the law.

Hamdan complained that his lawyers left him behind during Supreme Court arguments, prompting Hamdan and Allred to share a laugh.

“It was not the first time the two had talked across the well of the courtroom as startled lawyers on both sides looked on helplessly,” the Times wrote. “At times, it seemed as if they were friends.”

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Guantanamo/Detainees