GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — For the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a fellow Guantanamo inmate now facing trial was too “primitive” and uneducated to consider involving him in al-Qaeda’s terrorist plots.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once the terrorism network’s No. 3 leader, ridiculed Salim Hamdan’s credentials in testimony Friday, supporting the defendant’s claim that he was merely a member of Osama bin Laden’s motor pool.
“He was not a soldier, he was a driver,” Mohammed said in a four-page transcript of his written testimony.
Attorneys for Hamdan presented Mohammed’s account as their final evidence at the first U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II. A jury of six U.S. military officers is scheduled to hear the judge’s instructions and begin deliberations Monday.
Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.
During the two-week presentation of trial evidence, Hamdan’s interrogators testified that he carried a pistol to protect bin Laden, had advance knowledge of terrorist “operations” and swore an oath of loyalty to the al-Qaeda chief.
But the terrorist military leader made clear he had too low an opinion of Hamdan and other “illiterate” drivers to include them in any secret planning.
“His nature was more primitive (Bedouin) person and far from civilization. He was not fit to plan or execute,” said Mohammed, who described himself as “the executive director of 9/11” in the transcript, which was translated from Arabic.
