After 5 years at Gitmo, alleged bin Laden aide charged

WASHINGTON — The United States filed charges of conspiracy and providing support for terrorism Thursday against a Guantanamo detainee who worked as a driver for Osama bin Laden.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan is the third Guantanamo detainee to be charged under a new set of rules signed by President Bush after the Supreme Court rejected the previous system.

Hamdan, who is from Yemen, has been detained at Guantanamo since May 2002. It was his legal challenge that forced the Bush administration and Congress to draft new rules for the military trials, known as commissions, for the men held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in eastern Cuba.

He is expected to be arraigned in early June, when he can enter a plea to the charges.

The military said Hamdan conspired with bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders in the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition to working as bin Laden's driver and bodyguard, the U.S. says Hamdan transported and delivered weapons to al-Qaida and its associates and trained at terrorist camps. He could get life in prison if convicted of either charge.

Hamdan's lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, says the Yemeni admits working as a driver for bin Laden — being one of about eight men with similar duties — but denies any significant role in attacks against the United States.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, disputed the assertion that Hamdan was just a low-level player.

Hamdan's lawyers are seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that minor figures like him cannot be charged with conspiracy under the Law of War and that providing material support to terrorism was not a war crime until the U.S. made it one in last year's Military Commissions Act.