Puerto Rico — The United States filed charges of conspiracy and providing support for terrorism Thursday against a Guantanamo detainee who worked as a driver for Osama bin Laden.
Salim Ahmed Hamdan is the third Guantanamo detainee to be charged under a new set of rules signed last year by President Bush after the Supreme Court rejected the previous system.
Hamdan, who is from Yemen, has been detained at Guantanamo since May 2002. It was his legal challenge that forced the Bush administration and Congress to draft new rules for the military trials, known as commissions, for the men held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in eastern Cuba.
He is expected to be arraigned in early June, when he can enter a plea to the charges.
In the charging documents, the military said Hamdan conspired with bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
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