GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — 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 U.S. Army Special Forces officers Col. Morgan Banks, a psychologist, and Lt. Col. G. John Taylor, an attorney.
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 permitted to disclose only 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 someday hear Mr. Hamdan’s defense,” Mizer said in an e-mail before the session.
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.
The Yemeni prisoner has denied swearing loyalty to the al-Qaeda chief.
