French fries helped calm bin Laden driver: witnesses

By Randall Mikkelsen

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Hot McDonald's french fries and a call home encouraged Salim Hamdan to cooperate under interrogation but Osama bin Laden's driver did not like cold fries and isolation upset him, witnesses said at his Guantanamo war crimes trial on Friday.

"Mr. Hamdan commented that he liked McDonald's fries and we brought fries in," FBI special agent George Crouch told Hamdan's terrorism war crimes trial before a U.S. military commission. "Mr. Hamdan even appreciated that McDonald's fries are not good cold."

Hamdan grew upset and uncooperative when he put in solitary confinement amid a series of interrogations, prompting a heated complaint by Crouch to military guards.

Another time, Hamdan's mood lifted when he was allowed to call and tell his wife that he was alive seven months after his capture in November 2001.

"Mr. Hamdan cried quite a bit," Crouch said. "He was very grateful for the opportunity to speak to his wife. A burden had been lifted from him. At least his wife knew he was alive."

Hamdan was one of several drivers for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors say he was captured in Afghanistan at the wheel of a car with two surface-to-air missiles.

He is facing charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two.

Prosecutors are relying largely on Hamdan's statements during interrogations in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay during more than six years of captivity in an attempt to show he was an active, important supporter of bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Hamdan, described by his lawyers as a low-level worker, has said he was subjected to sleep deprivation and sexual improprieties while confined.

Hamdan was never read the rights against self-incrimination that suspects in U.S. criminal and military cases get and military commission judge Capt. Keith Allred has ruled what Hamdan told interrogators can be used against him in court.

40 INTERROGATORS

Defense attorneys displayed a list of 40 people who interrogated Hamdan, beginning in January 2002, including 21 FBI agents and 19 others.

There are as many as 29 government interrogation reports for sessions involving Hamdan, some lasting nearly two weeks, Michael Berrigan, deputy head of the military commissions defense team, told reporters after Friday's session.

Missing from the list was the CIA, known to have interrogated terrorism suspects at Guantanamo and elsewhere with harsh techniques. It also omits any questioning by the Joint Task Force, the military group that maintains the Guantanamo detention center.

Defense attorneys introduced a document indicating that Hamdan was interrogated in the middle of the night by someone whose identity is classified, between two days of questioning by FBI agent Daniel William.