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| Gitmo judge blamed for light sentence against terrorist |
| 2008-08-10 |
| A former member of the Guantanamo tribunal prosecution team says a judge's error may have been the contributing factor to a split verdict in the war crimes trial of the former driver of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden Salim Hamdan was captured at a roadblock in southern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Gitmo in May 2002. The military accused him of transporting missiles for Al Qaeda and helping Bin Laden escape U.S. retribution following the 9-11 attacks by driving him around Afghanistan. Last week, a Pentagon picked jury of six miliary officers deliberated for about eight hours over three days before convicting Hamdan of supporting terrorism. But the panel cleared him of conspiracy charges. Kyndra Rotunda was part of the prosecution team in some of the early military tribunals at GITMO. She says the panel might have found the terrorist guilty on the conspiracy charge, had it not been for the judge instructing the jury incorrectly relating to the surface to air missiles. According to Rotunda, "What the judge instructed the jury was that they could only find him guilty of a war crime if he intended to aim these weapons at innocent civilians, and that it wouldn't be a crime if he attempted to use them against U.S. forces. But that's not what international law says and not what the Geneva Conventions tell us. If he intended to aim them at U.S. forces because he was an illegal combatant, he wasn't wearing uniform or following the laws of war, he could still be guilty of a war crime." Rotunda says because the prosecution did not object to the incorrect instructions until the jury had already begun deliberations, the judge elected not to send in new instructions, and the error benefitted the defendant. She says failure to get a conviction on the conspiracy charges appears to be a contributing factor to why Prosecutors are now asking for a sentence of no less than 30 years, instead of life imprisonment. |
| Posted by:tipper |