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October 17, 2012

Court Overturns Terrorism Conviction of Bin Laden's Driver 
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A U.S. court has overturned the terrorism conviction of Osama bin
Laden's former driver and bodyguard, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. A former
Guantánamo prisoner, Hamdan was convicted of material support for
terrorism in 2008 in the first U.S. military commission trial in
decades. On Tuesday, a court unanimously struck down that conviction
because there was no such crime defined under international law at the
time. A senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union
said the decision "strikes the biggest blow yet against the legitimacy
of the Guantánamo military commissions, which have for years now been
trying people for a supposed war crime that in fact is not a war crime
at all."

 

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