Word: hamdan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hamdan was not an obvious choice for this historic role. He didn't appear to be a high-ranking officer of al-Qaeda, nor was he known to have participated in any specific terrorist operations. But from America's perspective, he did have certain things going for him. Because the military-tribunal system was brand-new, the government thought it made sense to try some lower-ranking operatives first, in case anything went wrong. Hamdan had also been in U.S. custody since his capture and had not been rendered to any foreign countries for interrogation, which might open the door...
...days leading up to 9/11, Hamdan joined a small motorcade of al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who drove into the mountains to watch the hijacked planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on satellite TV. Hamdan was also at bin Laden's side--as a driver--in the weeks that followed, while the motorcade moved from one guesthouse to the next as bin Laden and al-Zawahiri readied their remaining fighters for America's imminent invasion...
...late November, with U.S. forces sweeping across Afghanistan, Hamdan returned to his home in Kandahar for his young daughter and pregnant wife and drove them toward Pakistan. What happened next is a source of dispute between Hamdan and the government. According to his defense lawyers, Hamdan figured that he would be arrested if he tried to cross the border, so he instead dropped off his family and was planning to return the car, which he had borrowed, before finding a different way into Pakistan. Soufan and government prosecutors say that Hamdan remained in Afghanistan to fight alongside al-Qaeda...
There is evidence, though, that some of the information Hamdan provided to his interrogators was extracted by coercion. According to Hamdan, the Northern Alliance soldiers hog-tied him with electrical wire, placed a hood over his head and turned him over to the Americans for a $5,000 bounty. At the U.S.'s Bagram air base, Hamdan was allegedly kept bound hand and foot 24 hours a day. During his early interrogations, he claimed that he was in Afghanistan working for a Muslim charity. But after another detainee identified him as bin Laden's driver, Hamdan confessed...
...Hamdan was flown to Guantánamo Bay, where he became detainee No. 149. Eighteen months later, President Bush chose him from among thousands of detainees in U.S. custody to be the first Arab defendant in the military tribunals...