SR psychiatrist testifies for defense

A nationally renowned psychiatrist from Santa Rosa who has been a key witness in the military trial of Osama bin Laden's chauffeur took the stand Wednesday to again testify as a defense witness.

Emily Keram, a Pentagon-paid consultant, became involved in the case in 2004 when the defense team for Salim Ahmed Hamdan hired her to conduct an independent medical exam of the Yemeni native who was bin Laden's chauffeur and alleged bodyguard from 1996 to 2001.

The 37-year-old Hamdan, who worked as bin Laden's $200-a-month driver at the al-Qaida leader's Afghanistan farm, was captured by Afghan troops during the U.S. invasion in late 2001 and accused of being a member of al-Qaida and a terrorist, charges he denied.

Keram's initial analysis of Hamdan's deteriorating mental state, following more than a year in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay, was originally introduced before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 by Lt. Commander Charles Swift, a veteran of the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps and Hamdan's attorney.

Swift convinced the court to reject President Bush's effort to try more than 400 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban-connected terrorists by military tribunals, contending it violated both the Geneva Convention and the nation's Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Keram, who has been the key psychiatric consultant in several local high-profile cases, is a clinical professor in the Psychiatry and the Law program at UC San Francisco's School of Medicine.

She has spent more than 100 hours with Hamdan over the past several years and, according to news reports, testified during the initial phase of his trial on July 16 that Hamdan was so traumatized by his detention and sleep deprivation that he was unresponsive to his own lawyers.

"He feels dead inside," Keram testified.

Hamdan was convicted Wednesday at a military commission trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Keram has consistently declined to talk to The Press Democrat about her involvement in the landmark case.

But during Wednesday's hearing, news reports said Keram told the six-judge panel that Hamdan, orphaned at age 10 and largely uneducated, worked for bin Laden because he thought it was the only way for him to support his family.

Keram said when prosecutors showed Hamdan video of the Sept. 11 attacks, "He told me it was hard on his soul."

Keram said Hamdan told her that if he ever won his freedom he'd return to Yemen.

"I'll take my wife and my daughters and go to the desert with a camel and never talk to anyone again," she reported him saying, although she added that he also said he would consider returning to his job as a driver.

"I'll take whatever I can get," she quoted him as saying.

Hamdan, who might take the stand in his defense today, however, faces a possible life sentence.

You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.