Osama bin Laden’s alleged former driver and bodyguard pleaded “not guilty” yesterday to charges of colluding with the al Qaeda leader, as the first US war crimes trial since the Secnd World War began.

The trial is being held at a brand-new hilltop courthouse overlooking Guantanamo Bay — home of the infamous US naval base turned detention facility — with a five member jury selected from a pool of 13 US military officers.

Proceedings will be monitored by lawyers, journalists, and human rights campaigners — although they sit in a separate room and the video feed is on a 20-second delay, so that it can be edited if needed.

The defendant, Salim Ahmed Hamdan — thought to be about 40 years old and with back problems that make it difficult for him to walk — is accused of conspiracy and of providing material support for terrorism. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

It is alleged he was a driver and bodyguard for bin Laden during the period after the al Qaeda chief masterminded the September 11 attacks against New York City and Washington, DC.

“This military commission is assembled,” said Judge Keith Allred after the jurors were sworn in yesterday. “You must make your determination whether or not he is guilty based solely on the evidence presented here in court and the instructions I will give you. You must impartially hear the evidence.”

The first full-scale trial of a so-called “enemy combatant” in the controversial war crimes court comes almost seven years after the US opened the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba to detain both suspected al Qaeda members and fighters for the former Taleban regime in Afghanistan.

President Bush established special military commissions after September 11 to handle terrorist cases, saying that US courts couldn’t be relied upon for successful prosecutions. The commissions, which allow hearsay evidence, were declared illegal in 2006 by the Supreme Court but were later reinstated by Congress. They continue to face legal challenges and other hitches.

Prosecutors contend that Mr Hamdan, a Yemeni who has spent much of his time at Guantanamo in isolation, was close to al Qaeda’s inner circle and was on the way to fight US forces — there were allegedly two surface-to-air missiles in his car — when he was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, shortly after the US-led invasion began.

Mr Hamdan’s lawyers say he is not a member of al Qaeda, and was merely a driver and a mechanic in bin Laden’s motor pool who needed the $200 monthly salary.

Human rights advocates have complained about the conditions under which approximately 265 prisoners are held at the Guantanamo prison and about the legality of military commissions. Only about 20 of these prisoners have been charged and the US plans to put only 60 to 80 of them on trial.

The Guantanamo naval base became a PR disaster for the US as detainees, held for years without charges and denied the rights accorded to formal prisoners of war, complained of torture and abuse. Defence lawyers argue that much of the evidence against their clients may have been extracted through coercion.

Just before the start of this week’s trial, Judge Allred granted Mr Hamdan’s defense team a partial victory by throwing out some of his statements to interrogators — including those made at a US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and other made in the country’s Panjsher Valley.

But he did allow other statements to be entered as evidence.

Only one case at Guantanamo has so far been resolved. An Australian captive, David Hicks, pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism in a deal that averted a trial and limited his sentence to nine months in prison. Among the other detainees at the Guantanamo prison camp are the alleged September 11 plotters Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Walid bin Attash.

They are charged with conspiring with al Qaeda to murder civilians. They are also charged with 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed when hijacked passenger planes were flown into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on September 11.

Lawyers for Mr Hamdan plan to call Mohammed and bin Attash as witnesses in his trial to support his contention that he was not a member of al Qaeda.

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