WASHINGTON, July 18: The United States can begin trying Osama bin Laden’s former driver next week at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting the defendant’s plea to halt the first trial in the military system set up following the Sept 11 attacks.

In a victory for the Bush administration, US District Judge James Robertson ruled that civilian courts should let the military process play out as Congress intended — a decision that could clear the way for military commissions to begin prosecuting other suspects, including those charged directly in the 2001 attacks.

Had the trial been delayed, as requested by Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur Salim Hamdan, it would have been a sign that the entire trial process might crumble under the weight of judicial scrutiny.

Hamdan argued that he should be given a chance to challenge the legality of the military trials, based on last month’s Supreme Court ruling that said Guantanamo Bay prisoners could oppose their detentions in federal civilian courts. If judges hold that to be the case, every detainee at the US naval base in Cuba could use court challenges to delay his trial for months or years.

But Robertson refused to step in to stop the Hamdan trial, which is scheduled for Monday.

“Courts should respect the balance that Congress has struck,” he said, adding that “Hamdan is to face a military commission designed by Congress acting on guidelines handed down by the Supreme Court”.

At Guantanamo Bay, military prosecutors said the ruling gave them more confidence that the trials would go forward against 80 detainees, including alleged Sept 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others charged in the attacks.

Col Lawrence Morris, the chief prosecutor, predicted the trials would soon become routine. “It will start looking like the space shuttle,” Morris told reporters. “At some point you look and somebody asks, ‘Is there a space shuttle orbiting or not,’ and you don’t know anymore because it’s no longer an extraordinary event.”—AP