Goal of Hamdan Trial: Credibility

Prosecutors Seek Slam-Dunk Conviction

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Salim Ahmed Hamdan did not want to fight.

The man who wound up chauffeuring the world's most wanted terrorist emerged from an al-Qaeda camp in 1999 unimpressed with the weapons training he had received, according to an FBI agent who testified for the prosecution at Hamdan's military trial last week.

Agent Craig Donnachie said Hamdan told him during an interrogation in 2002 that he "had no interest in fighting after completing his time" at the camp in Afghanistan.

Asked by defense lawyers whether Hamdan had committed "to engage in terrorist acts,'' Donnachie responded: "He did not."

But in a number of ways, that is not really the point of this historic proceeding, the first U.S. military commission since World War II. To win a conviction on charges of material support for terrorism and conspiracy, the government need not present evidence to a jury of military officers that Hamdan committed acts of violence.

Perhaps even more important to the administration, observers say, is a smoothly run, credible trial, with few theatrics, that results in an easy conviction -- even if the defendant is one of seven former drivers for Osama bin Laden.

"This is essentially a new legal system, and they are using Hamdan to work out the kinks,'' said Jonathan Drimmer, a former Justice Department war crimes prosecutor. "It's a guinea pig trial."

Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and a former Justice Department official, said that whatever the verdict, the administration is "going to claim this is a success. It shows that there can be trials and that the process will go forward.''

He said the administration is eager to get the trials underway because President Bush's successor may want to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. "Is the next president going to say, 'I'm going to overturn those commissions, upset the appellate process'? I think the desire to move forward now is to avoid this being dismantled later.''

For the first week at least, the government has gotten its wish, with only one minor outburst by Hamdan marring the proceedings. As testimony drew to a close Friday, the government had made progress toward portraying the defendant as a relatively low-level al-Qaeda figure, someone who knew details of terrorist attacks, but only after they occurred and often based on conversations he overheard.

"We never put a rank on him. We never suggested he was in the top 17 or the top any-teen of al-Qaeda,'' Col. Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor for military commissions, said outside the courtroom. "I don't want . . . to have anybody have us appear to be asserting that he's more responsible than he is or that he's higher-ranking than he is.''

Yet prosecutors also have presented evidence that Hamdan transported weapons, guarded bin Laden and never left the terrorist leader's service even after learning about terrorist operations. That easily could secure a conviction for material support of terrorism, legal experts said.