GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA - A military jury on Wednesday found a former driver for Osama bin Laden guilty of supporting terrorism but not of more serious charges of conspiring in Al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on the United States, handing the Bush administration a partial victory in the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half-century.
The verdict, reached after about eight hours of deliberations by a jury of five men and one woman over three days, only intensified the debate over whether Salim Hamdan's conviction was preordained in an unfair system of military trials.
The Bush administration seized on the acquittal on the conspiracy charges to defend the tribunal system against accusations that it was politicized and drawn up to ensure convictions.
"We're pleased that Salim Hamdan received a fair trial," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
But defense lawyers said their client's rights were denied by an unfair process that was hastily patched together after the Supreme Court ruled that previous tribunal systems violated U.S. and international law.
"The problem is the law was specifically written after the fact to target Mr. Hamdan," said Charles Swift, one of Hamdan's civilian lawyers.
His lawyers also noted that under the military commission, Hamdan did not have many of the rights normally accorded by either U.S. civilian or military courts. The judge allowed secret testimony and hearsay evidence. Hamdan was not judged by a jury of his peers, and he received no warning about a right against self-incrimination.
Hamdan's attorneys also said interrogations at the center of the government's case were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.
