Speaking for bin Laden's driver

Of all the reasons to cancel class, Charles Schmitz's may be the most unusual.

The geography professor periodically catches a flight to Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba after he's finished teaching a class. He occasionally must cancel class in advance because his work will keep him out of the country for several days.

Over the last five years, Schmitz has worked as a interpreter for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, better known as one of Osama bin Laden's drivers and one of America's first detainees related to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Hamdan's attorney, then-lieutenant commander Charles Swift first contacted Schmitz, a specialist in Yemeni culture and dialect, in December 2003. Now retired from the military, Swift is serving as a civilian lawyer for Hamdan. He found Schmitz via Human Rights Watch.

"Oh you've got to come down to Guantanamo, you've got to interpret for me. I have this Yemeni client," Schmitz said, reenacting a phone call from Swift.

At first, Schmitz said he was skeptical, calling the case a "kangaroo trial," or rather court proceedings to legitimize a predetermined conviction.

During their conversation, however, Swift said something that caught Schmitz's attention, something that would take priority in his life for the next five years.

"'We're going to take down the system,' he said to me. This is a Navy JAG guy telling me this," Schmitz said. "He kept talking and talking, and he convinced me."

After about four months, with Schmitz's help, Swift went to federal court in Seattle, defending a man who was being accused of conspiracy to commit terrorism with the element of material support, aiding in bin Laden's flight following 9/11.

"We weren't able to stop the commission…it was the first trial of all of them at Gitmo…and basically the government failed," Schmitz said.

"We admitted he drove bin Laden after 9/11 and they knew that. He never denied that, and they made it into a war crime."

Schmitz said that conspiracy is a crime of state, not a war crime. Schmitz compared the non-prosecution of Adolf Hitler's driver to Hamdan's situation.

In the end, Swift's defense yielded to the lesser charge of material support. Hamdan was sentenced to five and half years, with time served, by a jury of colonels.

Over the time spent flying down to Cuba, where Schmitz said he once spent two straight months, he developed a connection with Hamdan.

"We went through some very difficult times together," Schmitz said. "It's very rough down there, it's very punitive and the conditions are very difficult. The worst part of it, there is no law. You're fate was in the hands of whoever was down there."

He said there was nothing criminal about Hamdan.

"[When] we met with the guy and he was very polite, very humble," Schmitz said.

"He's a guy who's out for his family and a living."

Hamdan first went to Afghanistan in 1996, but not to join bin Laden according to Schmitz. When he returned to Yemen, somebody told him that he should be a driver for bin Laden.

"He didn't know bin Laden. He had heard of him and saw him as a rich guy, a source of income," Schmitz said.

Schmitz recalled Hamdan working as a bus driver for six to nine months, shuttling workers to and from farms owned by bin Laden.

"Eventually bin Laden stuck him in the motor pool. So he was one of five or six drivers, part of a caravan," Schmitz said. Hamdan would drive back and forth from Yemen to Afghanistan and was eventually arrested at the border of Pakistan when he was trying to visit his family.

Hamdan has never seen his youngest daughter that is now 7 years old.

"The intelligence community was very interested in him, of course, because he had been driving with bin Laden. They had been interested with him for what he knew," Schmitz said.

There was never evidence to suggest that Hamdan was a threat to the nation. That factor, among a laundry list of political inconsistencies, had to be translated by Schmitz to Hamdan, who did not understand our political system.

"The case of Hamdan is guilt be association…and the jury didn't buy it," Schmitz said.

Hamdan's release is set for December of this year.

Schmitz developed an interest in geography with a focus in Yemeni culture during his time at the University of California Berkley, where in 1997 he earned his doctoral degree.

"I like the emphasis of teaching at Towson so I took the position," he said when deciding to join the department of geography and environmental planning at the University.

Schmitz teaches a number of classes including world regional geography, geographic perspectives, economic geography and graduate programs.

A notice for students taking his class…Schmitz will be traveling once more to Cuba to interpret a new twist in Hamdan's case. According to Schmitz, the government is attempting to hold Hamdan beyond his sentence as an "enemy combatant."

"It's not over until he is out of Gitmo," Schmitz said, who is confident that he will be released no later than January.

When Hamdan is freed, Schmitz will return researching and writing about Yemen.

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