Salim Hamdan

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan (Arabic: سالم احمد سالم حمدان, romanized: Sālim Aḥmad Sālim Ḥamdān; born February 25, 1968) is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008. He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.

He was originally charged by a military tribunal with "conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism," but the process of military tribunals was challenged in a case that went to the US Supreme Court. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Court ruled that the military commissions as set up by the United States Department of Defense (DOD) were flawed and unconstitutional. The DOD continued to hold Hamdan as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo.

After passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Hamdan was tried on revised charges beginning July 21, 2008, the first of the detainees to be tried under the new system. He was found guilty of "providing material support" to al Qaeda, but was acquitted by the jury of terrorism conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to five-and-a-half years of imprisonment by the military jury, which credited him for his detention as having already served five years of the sentence. A Pentagon spokesman noted then that the DOD might still classify Hamdan as an "enemy combatant" after he completed his sentence, and detain him indefinitely.

In November 2008, the U.S. transferred Hamdan to Yemen to serve out the remaining month of his sentence. He was released by the government there on January 8, 2009, permitting him to live with his family in Sanaʽa. On October 16, 2012, Hamdan's entire conviction was overturned on appeal in the US Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and he was acquitted of all charges.

Hamdan and his brother-in-law Nasser al-Bahri were the subjects of the award-winning documentary, The Oath (2010), by the American director Laura Poitras, which explored their time in al-Qaeda and later struggles.

Salim Hamdan was born in 1968 in Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen. He was raised as a Muslim.

He married and had daughters with his wife. He went to Afghanistan to work, where he was recruited to al-Qaeda by Nasser al-Bahri, also a Yemeni. Hamdan had first worked on an agricultural project started by Osama bin Laden. He started working as his driver because he needed the money.

Salim Hamdan was captured in southern Afghanistan on November 24, 2001. According to documents obtained by the Associated Press, he was captured in a car with four other alleged al-Qaeda associates, including Osama bin Laden's son-in-law. Three of the men were killed in a firefight with Afghan forces. The Afghans turned over Hamdan and the other surviving associate in the car to U.S. forces. Initially held in Afghanistan, he was transferred to then newly opened Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002.