GUANTANAMO BAY (Cuba) - OSAMA bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the Sept. 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday in an attempt to draw a link between Salim Hamdan and the Al-Qaeda leadership in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.
Hamdan's lawyer said in opening statements that the Yemeni, held for nearly seven years before his trial, was just a paid employee of the fugitive Al-Qaeda leader, a driver in the motor pool who never joined the militant group or plotted attacks on America.
But prosecutor Timothy Stone told the six-member jury of US military officers who will decide Hamdan's guilt or innocence that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the United States because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
'If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome,' Stone, a Navy officer, said in his opening remarks.
The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, later explained that Stone was quoting Hamdan in evidence that will be presented at trial. Morris declined to say if the 'dome' was a reference to the U.S. Capitol.
'Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused knew,' Mr Stone said.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. US officials have never stated it was shot down although rumors saying that abound to this day.
Hamdan, a father of two with a fourth-grade education, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism in the first US war crimes trial since World War Two. He could face life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors say Hamdan had access to Al-Qaeda's inner circle. Mr Stone told the jury that Hamdan earned the trust of bin Laden and helped him flee after attacks on US embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the Sept. 11 attacks.
'He served as bodyguard, driver, transported and delivered weapons, ammunition and supplies to Al-Qaeda,' Mr Stone said.
AP, which has been a lightning rod for criticism of the United States since early 2002, when it began housing a prison camp to hold alleged Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The war crimes tribunal system has been criticized by human rights groups and defense lawyers, some of them US military officers. Detainees have been held for years without charges.
Washington has declared them unlawful enemy combatants not entitled to the rights afforded formal prisoners of war.
Responding to the widespread criticism, Morris, the chief prosecutor, said on Tuesday: 'In my opinion they are seeing the most just war crimes trial that anyone has ever seen.' -- REUTERS
