Gitmo detainee says questioner acted improperly

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged al-Qaida driver who faces a historic military trial next week, testified Tuesday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using sexually suggestive behavior that he called "improper."

Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who is accused in a terrorism conspiracy, told a military court that during questioning in 2002 a woman interrogator "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers."

"Did she touch your thigh?" asked Hamdan's attorney, Charles Swift.

"Yes. ... I said to her, 'What do you want?' " Hamdan said at a pretrial hearing. "She said, 'I want you to answer all of my questions.' "

"Did you answer all of her questions after that?" Swift asked. Hamdan said he did.

Hamdan's attorneys are seeking to persuade a judge to throw out incriminating statements he allegedly made to interrogators at the U.S. military prison here, arguing that they were obtained through coercive interrogation tactics.

His trial, scheduled for Monday, would be the first military commission conducted by the United States in more than half a century. Hamdan's attorneys have sought a delay from U.S. District Judge James Robertson, but the Justice Department in court filings late Monday urged Robertson not to delay it, contending that the military proceedings are fair.

Hamdan's testimony in a former aircraft operations center-turned-courtroom came on the same day that lawyers representing another Guantánamo detainee released more than seven hours of videotape of his questioning. The tapes, the first to publicly show an interrogation session at the U.S. military prison, depicted Canadian Omar Khadr, picked up as a teenager and accused of killing a U.S. soldier in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, being questioned by Canadian officials in 2003.

The interrogators are shown offering Khadr cans of soda and McDonald's hamburgers while trying to win his trust. Khadr complains to them about his treatment during captivity.

Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday that U.S. interrogators treat detainees at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere humanely.