Bin Laden's driver swore loyalty oath: witness

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The first prisoner tried at the Guantanamo war crimes court pledged a loyalty oath to Osama bin Laden, according to a U.S. naval investigator whose testimony on Wednesday might not be heard by the jury.

The judge in the case said prosecutors missed a deadline to turn over evidence, so now they must prove that defendant Salim Hamdan's statements were obtained without coercion and abuse.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred said he would decide by Thursday whether jurors could hear the testimony.

Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, earned $200 a month as a driver for bin Laden in Afghanistan. He is the first prisoner to be tried in the special military tribunal at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He could face life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

Prosecutors portray him as a trusted bin Laden aide who sometimes acted as his bodyguard and helped him avoid capture, and who enthusiastically supported the al Qaeda leader even after hearing him gloat about the death toll from the September 11 attacks.

They planned to wrap up their case with testimony from Robert McFadden, an agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service who interviewed Hamdan at Guantanamo in 2003.

PLEDGING BAYAT

With jurors out of the room, McFadden testified about that interview, in which Hamdan was questioned about things he had told more than 40 agents from various U.S. agencies in prior interrogations.

"Mr. Hamdan said he pledged bayat to Osama bin Laden," McFadden said, using an Arabic term for loyalty oath.

McFadden said Hamdan expressed support for the al Qaeda leader's goal of expelling Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, "but if it was Muslim-on-Muslim violence, political violence, then he reserved the right to withdraw from it."

Hamdan denied making that statement and said McFadden had misunderstood when an Arabic-speaking FBI agent who accompanied him told Hamdan that an acquaintance had sworn such an oath.

The defense portrays Hamdan as an uneducated laborer who joined the bin Laden motor pool because he needed the wages but had no prior knowledge of al Qaeda attacks.

Defense lawyers want McFadden's testimony excluded on grounds that it included information obtained from Hamdan through sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and other coercive treatment.

BURDEN ON PROSECUTORS

Prosecutors missed a court deadline to turn over evidence about Hamdan's treatment at Guantanamo, providing more than 1,200 pages of documents just days before the trial began.

Allred punished them by putting the burden on prosecutors to prove the interrogation was not tainted by coercion or abuse.

"You're on the hot seat because of unsatisfactory performance of discovery," Allred told them. He previously banned the use of evidence obtained from harsh interrogations of Hamdan in Afghanistan after his capture there in November 2001.

Among the late-produced evidence was a secret report from a woman interrogator describing her own actions, which Deputy Chief Defense Counsel Michael Berrigan called troubling proof that Hamdan had been sexually humiliated during interrogations at Guantanamo.

Also given to the judge on Wednesday were detention logs showing Hamdan was moved to a new cell at 11 p.m. the night before McFadden's all-day interrogation. Defense lawyers said the logs supported Hamdan's version of events and accused the government of suppressing evidence to cover its own misdeeds.

"The whole system stinks," Berrigan said.

The prosecution planned to rest its case on Thursday after presenting seven days of evidence in the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War Two.

Then the defense will begin its case. If the trial continues at the present pace, the jury of six U.S. military officers could begin deliberating their verdict within a week.

(Editing by Jim Loney and Xavier Briand)