MIAMI — Senior U.S. military officers will be scrambled from around the world this weekend for jury duty at Guantanamo Bay in the Pentagon’s first war-crimes trial since World War II.
In a victory for the Bush administration in its protracted quest to prosecute terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, a federal judge in Washington on Thursday rejected defense attorneys’ appeals to halt the trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Hamdan of Yemen, and it will get under way Monday.
Hamdan’s lawyers had argued before both U.S. District Judge James Robertson and the military judge hearing pretrial motions at Guantanamo, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, that the trial should be delayed until civilian judges weigh the constitutionality of the tribunal’s rules and procedures.
Robertson said those challenges could be brought during or after the trial and that he would respect “the balance struck by Congress” when it created the war-crimes tribunal with the 2006 Military Commissions Act.
Allred rejected defense contentions that Hamdan is entitled to constitutional protections beyond the right of habeas corpus upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 12.
Hamdan will be the first from among 265 Guantanamo prisoners to be tried on terrorism charges, and his appearance before Allred and a panel of at least seven senior officers will allow the Bush administration to demonstrate whether the tribunal it created nearly seven years ago works and can produce convictions.
Robertson’s refusal to postpone the trial also allows the Republican administration to put some terrorism suspects on trial before the presidential election. Trials of Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr and five men facing death-penalty charges for alleged involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are also expected to begin before early November.
If Hamdan were to be convicted and sentenced and the Sept. 11 defendants, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are tried this fall, it could be more difficult for the next administration to dismantle a judicial system that keeps the reputed terrorists off U.S. soil.
Both presumptive presidential nominees, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have said they want to close the Guantanamo jail.
