A US federal judge ruled today that the first Guantanamo Bay war crimes trial, involving Osama bin Laden's former driver, can start next week.
US District Judge James Robertson rejected a request from attorneys for Salim Hamdan, who was the driver for al-Qaeda leader bin Laden in Afghanistan, to stop his trial while he challenges the military tribunal system.
Judge Robertson read his ruling from the bench after hearing more than two hours of arguments from Hamdan's lawyers and from the US Justice Department on whether the trial should be delayed. It is scheduled to start on July 21st.
Hamdan, a Yemeni, would be the first prisoner tried in the U.S. war crimes court at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. There are about 265 detainees at Guantanamo, which was set up in January 2002 to hold terrorism suspects captured after the September 11th attacks.
Hamdan's attorneys said a landmark US Supreme Court ruling last month made clear the detainees are entitled to fundamental constitutional rights.
"Guantanamo once was a Constitution-free zone. It no longer is," Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal, one of the lawyers for Hamdan, said in arguing that the trial should be put on hold.
But the judge sided with the arguments made by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John O'Quinn, who said a 2006 law that President George W Bush pushed through Congress allows such challenges only after the trial has taken place.
After the trial is over, the law allows the prisoner to go to the US Court of Appeals, Judge Robertson said, adding that this was the system of review decided by Mr Bush and the Congress.
Reuters