Osama's driver deemed unlawful combatant

Reuters:

Osama bin Laden's driver is not a prisoner of war as defined by the Geneva Conventions and can be tried by a Guantanamo war crimes tribunal, a U.S. military judge ruled in a decision made public on Thursday.

The judge said Yemeni prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan is an "unlawful enemy combatant" under the law passed by Congress last year to provide a legal basis to try non-U.S. citizens on terrorism charges in a special war crimes court at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Lawyers for Hamdan, who has acknowledged he was paid $200 a month to drive and guard the al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, said he was a civilian support worker who should be considered a prisoner of war deserving of the safeguards outlined in the Geneva Conventions that govern the treatment of war captives.

...


We have now jumped through yet another hoop for an obvious finding in order to prosecute this guy as a war criminal. This guy would have had his trial years ago if he and his lawyers had not engaged in dilatory tactics to avoid the obvious.

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