The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

A special military trial was to get underway Monday at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, with a former driver for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden facing the first US war-crimes tribunal since the end of World War II.

Salim Hamdan, from Yemen, is the first "enemy combatant" from the US "war on terror" to face a full-scale trial since the prison camp at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was opened in late 2001.

And with a federal judge rebuffing the last-ditch attempt by Hamdan's lawyers to halt the trial, the landmark case is now set to open Monday after preliminary hearings over the past week. Hamdan, whose trial is expected to last two weeks, faces charges of "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism," and could receive life imprisonment if convicted.

Australian national David Hicks was to face a military trial in 2007 but pleaded guilty at a hearing before it began.

After being held without trial for five years, Hicks admitted to providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal that allowed him to return to his country where he served the remainder of his sentence.

The Pentagon is withholding the identities of the 13-member jury pool brought to Guantanamo over the weekend, but all are US military officers.

The administration of President George W. Bush set up the special military commissions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The military commissions were invalidated in 2006 by the Supreme Court, only to be restored a few months later by the US Congress.

They have since been struck by a series of legal battles and hitches-including a June Supreme Court decision that granted foreign terror suspects captured abroad the right to challenge their detention in US courts-that have pushed back the opening of Hamdan's lawsuit, and perhaps others to come.

The indictment against Hamdan, who is about 40 years old, alleges that he met bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1996 and "ultimately became a bodyguard and personal driver" for the Al-Qaeda leader.

It alleges that Hamdan received training in the use of rifles, handguns and machine guns in an Al-Qaeda camp and also "delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to Al-Qaeda members and associates."

Hamdan was transferred in 2002 to Guantanamo-where he has been spent much of his detention in isolation-and ordered tried by a military tribunal.