(Reuters) - The U.S. presidential candidates differed on Wednesday in their reaction to a military tribunal’s guilty verdict for Osama bin Laden’s driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan at a military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba.
Republican Sen. John McCain said in a statement the verdict showed the system was working.
“Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a trusted confidante of Osama Bin Laden, was provided a full hearing of the charges against him and was represented by counsel who vigorously defended him.”
“This process demonstrated that military commissions can effectively bring very dangerous terrorists to justice. The fact that the jury did not find Hamdan guilty of all of the charges brought against him demonstrates that the jury weighed the evidence carefully.”
McCain noted that he supported the law creating the military tribunals while Obama has opposed it.
McCain’s has called for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and moving inmates to the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
He backed the Military Commissions Act signed into law by President George W. Bush, which provided for military trials for some of the detainees and allowed use of evidence obtained through torture.
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama issued a statement saying the fact that the Hamdan trial “took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the administration’s legal framework.”
He added: “It’s time to better protect the American people and our values by bringing swift and sure justice to terrorists through our courts and our Uniform Code of Military Justice.”
“And while it is important to convict anyone who provides material support for terrorism, it is long past time to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and the terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans,” he said.
Obama supports shutting down the Guantanamo prison and says U.S. civilian courts and the traditional military courts-martial system can handle detainee trials.
He said he would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, which bans the use of torture of war prisoners. Bush has said the conventions did not apply to the detained terrorism suspects.
Editing by David Storey
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