by Tim Witcher
GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Aug 23 (AFP) - The United States faces an epic legal battle as it launches military tribunals on Tuesday for four war on terror detainees, including an Australian Taliban fighter.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, will be the first to be formally charged with war crimes when he appears before a military commission at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba on Tuesday morning.
Australian David Hicks will follow on Wednesday and another Yemeni and a Sudanese will follow later in the week. They are also charged with conspiracy in acting for the Al-Qaeda leader.
US military authorities have insisted the trials will be open and fair. But critics say they do not meet US or international law because the detainees and evidence against them have been shrouded in secrecy.
American lawyers for Hamdan and others among the 585 Taliban and Al-Qaeda detainees held at Guantanamo have already started legal action in US courts that is expected to end at the Supreme Court.
Each defendant faces charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, while Hicks, a 29-year-old who went to Afghanistan after converting to Islam, also faces a charge of attempted murder.
All will wear "civilian attire" and will not be in the shackles they carry in Camp Delta.
US authorities have promised that none of the four will face the death penalty. But they could be jailed for life and there is no guarantee that others tried on the same charges in the future will not be sentenced to death.
Hamdan's military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charlie Swift, has been one of the leading critics of the US military.
"We just have not been given enough information and access to proceed with hearings as important as these," he said.
Swift said he will concentrate this week on trying to convince the commission of five military officers that US courts should first rule on the legality of the tribunals before full trials go ahead.
He has started action in the civilian US courts to get a ruling that the treatment of Guantanamo detainees has been illegal.
The US Supreme Court ruled in June that military authorities had not given inmates their full rights. Legal experts predict a new ruling will be made on the military commissions.
According to his lawyer, Hamdan was heading to Tajikistan as a pilgrim when he met bin Laden in 1996 or 1997. He admits to being bin Laden's driver but not to being a member of Al-Qaeda or involvement in terrorist attacks.
Hicks is also expected to plead not guilty if asked when he appears.
The family of the 29-year-old from Adelaide, who also fought for an Islamic-led militia in Kosovo in 1999, is expected in Guantanamo on Tuesday to seek what would be their first meeting with him since his detention in December 2001.
Nearly all of the Guantanamo detainees have been kept for more than two and half years without access to a lawyer or being informed of charges against them.
Several former inmates have said they were tortured during detention and top US military officials admit they expect defence lawyers to argue that interrogators forced confessions from detainees.
Major General John Altenberg, who heads the Office of the Military Commissions (OMC), which runs the hearings, predicted last week that torture allegations would be an "important issue in at least some of the trials."
Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have described the hearings as "show trials" and criticised them for the lack of appeal to an independent body, and the way in which classified evidence is kept from defendants.
The US military rejects such criticism.
Officials have highlighted how there is a presumption of innocence and how the defence can call witnesses as in normal US courts.
"I hope that over the course of time people will see this as a proper venue for trying war crimes in the course of an ongoing conflict," said Lieutenant Susan McGarvey, an OMC spokeswoman.