Osama bin Laden's former driver was found guilty of supporting terrorism by a military jury in Guantanamo Bay yesterday in the first US war crimes trial since the Second World War.

The jury of six US military officers found Salim Hamdan not guilty of the more serious charge of conspiring with al-Qaeda to attack civilians, which meant that the Bush Administration was unable to prove that he had helped to plot and carry out terrorist attacks.

The proceedings were the first full test of the military tribunal system to try foreign captives on charges of terrorism outside the regular US court system.

The White House welcomed the verdict and called the trial fair but civil liberty groups said that the process was marred by irregularities that favoured the prosecution.

Hamdan, a Yemeni believed to be about 40, stood solemnly by his lawyers in the courtroom, wearing a white turban, long white robe and a tan blazer, as he waited for the verdict. Listening through headphones to the interpreter he wept into his hands when he was pronounced guilty. He now faces a life sentence.

Hamdan was arrested at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001. He had two surface-to-air missiles in the car. The prosecution said that between 1998 and 2001 he had delivered weapons for al-Qaeda and was part of the inner circle of bin Laden.

“He's an al-Qaeda warrior. He has wounded, and the people he has worked with have wounded the world,” John Murphy, for the prosecution, told the court.

The defence argued that Hamdan was a minor figure who had played no role in terror plots and they questioned whether his job as a driver qualified as a war crime.

They referred to the Nuremberg trials and said that Hitler's driver was never prosecuted for war crimes.

The jury heard two weeks of testimony, including statements from ten federal agents who interrogated Hamdan without warning him that his words would be used against him at trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union said that it viewed the tribunal process as deeply flawed. “The rules for the Guantanamo military commissions are so flawed that justice could never be served. From start to finish this has been a monumental debacle of American justice,” Anthony Romero, its executive director, said.

Hamdan was convicted of five counts of providing material support for terrorism, specifically that his personal services to al-Qaeda included driving and acting as a bodyguard to a man he knew was the leader of a terrorist organisation.

The lawyers for Hamdan said that they would appeal. They have the right to take the case to the US Supreme Court.

It was the third attempt to try Hamdan, who won a Supreme Court victory that invalidated the Guantanamo court system in 2006.

The tribunals were reconstituted, with modifications, by Congress. The system allowed evidence obtained through coercion - a method that defence lawyers described as torture.

Under the system it takes a two-thirds majority - four of the six officers on the jury - to secure a conviction.

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