Hearing postponed for bin Laden's driver

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A military judge Thursday postponed a hearing on Osama bin Laden's driver's complaint about alleged solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the military judge hearing pretrial motions, said Salim Hamdan's lawyers did not give the U.S. government time to respond formally, the Miami Herald reported. The judge postponed hearing the issue until mid-March, when the next pretrial hearing is scheduled.

Lawyers for Hamdan, 36, had notified the Pentagon's military commissions that the driver, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, was so traumatized by his solitary confinement that he was at risk of not being able to assist in his defense, the newspaper reported.

Hamdan is held in a single-person cell. His attorneys said Hamdan also was upset because he knew other prisoners were being held in communal detention in a more permissive compound.

During Thursday's hearing, military lawyers revealed they haven't been able to locate Hamdan's 2002 prison camp records. The U.S. military moved him to Guantanamo Bay in May 2002, after it closed a makeshift prison camp.

Hamdan's lawyers also want to interview so-called high-value detainees -- alleged al-Qaida senior leadership -- held in a segregated prison camp at Guantanamo.