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Salim Hamdan awaits his verdict today from the kangaroo court the US has set up to try him. Hamdan is accused of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists, that is, of acting as chauffeur to Osama bin Laden. A threat to be sure, but a threat to whom, exactly?

An acquittal is unlikely, despite the dubious equation of driving with material aid. The judges are military officers, answerable to the Commander-in-Chief and not to civil law, carefully selected to be sympathetic to the current administration’s political desires. Much of the evidence against Hamdan, including the identities of his accusers, has been kept from him and his attorneys on “security” grounds, and his attorneys have been informed that attorney-client privilege will not be respected, again on “security” grounds. His trial is being held in secret, again on grounds of “security.” Simply getting a trial of any kind required a suit taken to the Supreme Court. The trial is a mockery of both American and international justice, and stands in stark contrast to the Nuremberg trials following World War II, wherein the victorious Allies worked scrupulously not only to provide a fair trial but to maintain the appearance of a fair trial, secure in the belief that the law exerts its greatest authority—indeed, that it works at all—only when it is open and impartial.

Curiously, Hitler’s chauffeur was brought to Nuremburg. Erich Kempka was captured as something of a cat’s-paw, sent ahead by Nazi leaders to see whether it was safe to surrender to Anglo-American forces. He, too, was investigated on grounds of aiding criminal leaders, and was held as an asset to military intelligence. He, however, was acquitted without trial of all charges. Even more importantly, he was, after a thorough debriefing, set free—there is only so much information you can wring from any asset.

Many defendants were tried and acquitted in Nuremberg, despite considerable objections from the general populace who understandably wanted to see severe and widespread punishment for participants in Nazi Germany’s aggression. But the court lived up to its principles. It served justice and the rule of law, and where evidence was insufficient, or where acts of war were not judged atrocities, the court found defendants not guilty.

That’s not to say it simply let everyone go; several German officers, especially among the fanatical SS, were found guilty and hanged. Members of the high command, who could not plead that they were “only following orders,” were also frequently convicted. So, too, were Japanese officers for whom a record of torture could be produced. One of the most popular forms of torture employed in the Pacific theater was a form of water torture—not to be confused with the infamous “Chinese water torture”—in which Allied personnel were tied down and water was poured over their face until they felt they were about to drown. We now refer to this form of torture as “waterboarding.” Japanese officers were hanged for waterboarding US troops; the need for military intelligence against an encroaching enemy was ruled insufficient justification for employing torture.

The current US administration now insists that waterboarding, far from being a hanging offense, is not even torture. A world court with the same authority as the Nuremburg trials, should one ever materialize, may feel otherwise. Of course, such a court would need evidence of torture to prosecute. Sworn testimony would be an excellent start to such evidence.

Sadly, even if Hamdan is, by some miraculous erpution of conscience on the part of his judges, acquitted, he will not go free. The Bush administration, continuing its practice of ignoring the law when it suits them, will keep him imprisoned. While technically acknowledging the court’s authority, the White House has already announced that it will hold Hamdan indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” even if acquitted, using the excuse that he is too valuable an asset to release, despite the fact that he, like Kempka, could be thoroughly debriefed, and despite the fact that he could without the use of a prison be made available for later questioning should it prove necessary, and despite the fact that whatever information he may have loses value quickly over time—and he hasn’t overheard a word of bin Laden’s for seven years.

Of course, Hamdan is not quite in the same situation as Kempka. He has other information of concern to our government officials, from president to vice president to attorney general to DoJ lawyers to military officers to CIA operatives. Information not gained during his service as chauffeur, but rather gained as the victim of and witness to torture at the hands of the US officials who hold him.

Officially, Hamdan is on trial for aiding terrorists. Unofficially, he has already been convicted of a far more damning crime, one for which there is no appeal: possessing information damaging to the powers that be.