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 US 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-US citizens on terrorism charges in a special war crimes court at the US 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.
POWs can be tried by court-martial, but not in ad hoc tribunals such as those still evolving at Guantanamo. A finding that Hamdan was a POW would have raised questions about the status of the other 285 foreign captives held at the Guantanamo prison camp.
The ruling by the military judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, clears the way for Hamdan's trial to proceed in the Guantanamo war court, where he would face life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.
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