Bin Laden's driver lacked terror resume - witness

By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A driver for Osama bin Laden lacked the education and skills for admission to the al Qaeda leader's inner circle, a defense witness testified on Wednesday at his Guantanamo war-crimes trial.

"I don't see him being that quality of material," Dr. Brian Williams, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and an expert on central Asian jihadists, said of defendant Salim Hamdan.

Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, earned $200 a month as a driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and is the first prisoner to be tried in the special military tribunal at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He could face life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

Prosecutors portray him as a trusted bin Laden aide who sometimes acted as his bodyguard and helped him avoid capture, and who enthusiastically supported the al Qaeda leader even after hearing him gloat about the death toll from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The defense portrays Hamdan as an uneducated laborer who joined the bin Laden motor pool because he needed the wages to support himself and get married, but who had no prior knowledge of al Qaeda attacks.

Wilson testified at length about al Qaeda's relationship with the Taliban and with Arab fighters in Afghanistan, where Hamdan was captured in November 2001.