Ex-prosecutor at Guantanamo to be defense witness

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO —  The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday that he would be a defense witness for the driver of Osama bin Laden.

Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned in October over alleged political interference in the U.S. military tribunals, told the Associated Press that he would appear at a hearing for Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

“I expect to be called as a witness. . . . I’m more than happy to testify,” Davis said in a telephone interview from Washington. He called it “an opportunity to tell the truth.”

At the April pretrial hearing inside the U.S. military base in southeast Cuba, Hamdan’s defense team plans to argue that the alleged political interference cited by Davis violates the Military Commissions Act, Hamdan’s military lawyer, Navy Lt. Brian Mizer, told the Associated Press.

Davis alleges, among other things, that Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II said in August 2005 that any acquittals of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo would make the United States look bad, calling into question the fairness of the proceedings.

“He said, ‘We can’t have acquittals; we’ve got to have convictions,’ ” Davis recalled.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that Haynes made such a comment. Gordon also denied the former prosecutor’s allegations of political interference, which he has repeated in newspaper opinion columns and in interviews in recent months.

If the judge rejects the motion to dismiss, Mizer said, the defense will seek to remove two top officials in the military commission system -- legal advisor Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann and Convening Authority Susan Crawford -- from Hamdan’s case. This would probably result in further delays to a trial that has been stalled by legal challenges.

It is not clear whether the Pentagon -- which defends the commission system as fair -- will allow Davis to testify. In December, two months after he resigned as the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war-crimes tribunals, the Defense Department barred Davis from appearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

The U.S. holds about 275 men at Guantanamo and plans to prosecute about 80 before military commissions. The Pentagon this month charged six detainees with murder and war crimes for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and said they could be executed if convicted.