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U.S. holds first secret session of terror trial
Friday, August 01, 2008 | No comments posted.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — The U.S. military closed a session of a Guantanamo war crimes trial to journalists and other observers Thursday for the presentation of classified evidence — a first for the tribunal system created to prosecute alleged terrorists.
Anyone without a security clearance was forced to leave the courtroom for the testimony of two witnesses for Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan. The defendant stayed in the courtroom.
The witnesses were identified as Col. Morgan Banks, a psychologist with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and Lt. Col. G. John Taylor. Officials did not say why their testimony had to be kept secret.
Hamdan, one of 21 Guantanamo prisoners charged so far, faces up to life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism at the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
His Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, said that under court rules he was only permitted to disclose that the two witnesses were at the United States’ Bagram air base in Afghanistan when Hamdan was taken there by U.S. forces in December 2001.
“It is my hope that the American public will some day hear Mr. Hamdan’s defense,” Mizer said in an e-mail before the session.
Some witnesses at Hamdan’s trial have been identified only by numbers or their initials, and security officers have cut off audio to observers at pretrial hearings of other detainees to conceal classified information.
But Thursday’s session marked the first time the Bush administration’s military tribunals at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba have taken testimony in secret, according to Air Force Capt. Paula Bissonette, a tribunals spokeswoman.
The chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said the government wants to keep the trials as open as possible.
“It is a balance between the goal of openness ... and the need to address some national security concerns,” he said.
The prosecution rested its case earlier Thursday following testimony from a Naval Criminal Investigative Service interrogator, Robert McFadden, who said Hamdan swore allegiance to bin Laden.
Anyone without a security clearance was forced to leave the courtroom for the testimony of two witnesses for Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan. The defendant stayed in the courtroom.
The witnesses were identified as Col. Morgan Banks, a psychologist with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and Lt. Col. G. John Taylor. Officials did not say why their testimony had to be kept secret.
Hamdan, one of 21 Guantanamo prisoners charged so far, faces up to life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism at the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
His Pentagon-appointed attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, said that under court rules he was only permitted to disclose that the two witnesses were at the United States’ Bagram air base in Afghanistan when Hamdan was taken there by U.S. forces in December 2001.
“It is my hope that the American public will some day hear Mr. Hamdan’s defense,” Mizer said in an e-mail before the session.
Some witnesses at Hamdan’s trial have been identified only by numbers or their initials, and security officers have cut off audio to observers at pretrial hearings of other detainees to conceal classified information.
But Thursday’s session marked the first time the Bush administration’s military tribunals at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba have taken testimony in secret, according to Air Force Capt. Paula Bissonette, a tribunals spokeswoman.
The chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said the government wants to keep the trials as open as possible.
“It is a balance between the goal of openness ... and the need to address some national security concerns,” he said.
The prosecution rested its case earlier Thursday following testimony from a Naval Criminal Investigative Service interrogator, Robert McFadden, who said Hamdan swore allegiance to bin Laden.
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