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US military judge denies bin Laden's driver POW status

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US military judge on Thursday ruled that Osama bin Laden's former driver is an unlawful enemy combatant and can be tried before a military commission at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thus denying him prisoner of war status.

Salim Hamdan, 37, a native of Yemen, was bin Laden's personal driver in Afghanistan, and was captured in November 2001 with surface-to-air missiles in his car.

Hamdan's defense had argued that he was not a fighter, but merely a driver transporting weapons.

If Hamdan was found to be a lawful combatant he could have obtained prisoner of war status, which could have lead to him being tried in a court-martial with protections guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions which govern the rights and treatment of captives in wartime, rather than the special tribunals set up for Guantanamo inmates.

"There being no constitutional impediment to the commission's exercise of jurisdiction over him' the accused may be tried by military commission," said the judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, in his ruling.

Hamdan will be put on a trial scheduled to last from May 28 to June 8 on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism, the Pentagon said. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Lieutenant Brian Mizner, from Hamdan's defense team, said in a statement they were "disappointed" by the ruling.

Evidence was presented "to suggest that, if the weapons at issue were in the car he was driving at the time he was apprehended, Mr. Hamdan was doing nothing more than transporting conventional weapons of war in the direction of a conventional battleground in support of a known enemy combatant engaged in an international armed conflict," Mizer said.

Also Thursday the US military filed charges Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi, 32, a native of Saudi Arabia being held in Guantanamo, on charges that he was part of a plot to bomb a ship off the coast of Yemen that never took place.

According to a military lawyer Darbi is the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Midharone, of the hijackers that took over the passenger jet that slammed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The US military is currently holding some 285 prisoners at Guantanamo.