US convicts Bin Laden's driver

A military court yesterday convicted Osama bin Laden's driver of supporting terrorism but acquitted him on the more serious charge of conspiring with al Qaeda in the first US war crimes trial since World War II.

The trial of Yemeni captive Salim Hamdan at the remote US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was the first full test of the controversial tribunal authorized by the Bush administration to try foreign captives on terrorism charges outside the regular US court system.

Supporters of the military trial process, including the White House, said it had been vindicated by the split verdicts. Human rights and civil liberties groups, and military defence lawyers, condemned the process.

Mr Hamdan faces a maximum penalty of life in prison but could have been held indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" even had he been acquitted on all charges. Sentencing could take two days. The six US military jurors deliberated a little over eight hours before reaching their verdict on the Yemeni native, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 after the US invasion that followed the September 11 attacks.

Mr Hamdan, wearing a white turban and long white robe topped with a tan blazer, stood tensely in the courtroom beside his lawyers as the verdict was announced, listening through headphones to the English-Arabic interpreter. He raised his hands and wept into them as the guilty verdict was read.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Mr Hamdan received a fair trial and the military tribunal had been shown to work, while Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the military would now move forward with trying 20 other Guantanamo detainees facing war crimes charges.

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain said he welcomed the verdict and that the process of bringing terrorists to justice had been too long delayed. Democratic candidate Barack Obama did not issue an immediate reaction.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the tribunal process was deeply flawed and a betrayal of American values. "From start to finish, this has been a monumental debacle of American justice," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero in a statement.

The jury heard two weeks of testimony, including that of 10 federal agents who interrogated Mr Hamdan without warning him that his confessions would be used against him in a criminal trial.

It was the Bush administration's third attempt to try Mr Hamdan, who won a Supreme Court victory that scrapped the first version of the Guantanamo court system in 2006. The charges were twice dropped and refiled.

The charges he was cleared of yesterday - two counts of conspiring with al Qaeda to attack civilians, destroy property, commit murder in violation of the laws of war - were the only charges against him in the first prosecution attempt.