Former bin Laden driver gets light sentence

[August 08, 2008]  GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A prisonerconvicted at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial will be eligible for release in less than five months after receiving a surprisingly light sentence repudiating Pentagon prosecutors.

The victory for Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was a rebuke to military prosecutors who portrayed him as a hardened al-Qaida warrior and sought a sentence of 30 years to life in prison.

The U.S. military jury sentenced the Yemeni prisoner Thursday to just 5 1/2 years in prison, including five years and a month already served at Guantanamo Bay. U.S. authorities insist they could still hold him indefinitely without charge, but defense lawyers and human rights groups say the military will face pressure to release him at the end of his sentence.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, called Hamdan a "s mall player," and the jury apparently agreed, rejecting the recommendation of prosecutors who said even a life sentence would be fitting in order to send an example to would-be terrorists.

"I hope the day comes that you return to your wife and daughters and your country, and you're able to be a provider, a father and a husband in the best sense of all those terms," Allred told Hamdan at the close of the hearing.

The prisoner, dressed in a charcoal sports coat and white robe, responded: "God willing."

Hamdan thanked the jurors for the sentence and repeated his apology for having served bin Laden.

"I would like to apologize one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me," Hamdan told the five-man, one-woman jury, all military officers picked by the Pentagon for the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half-century.

Hamdan raised both hands in the air and waved as he left the courtroom, saying "bye, bye everybody" in English.

It was an anticlimactic finish to a case that had taken on a special prominence as the first Guantanamo war crimes trial. The Pentagon pushed forward with Hamdan's prosecution despite repeated legal challenges that went to the Supreme Court in a 2006 case that struck down the previous rules for the tribunals, prompting Congress and President Bush to craft new ones.

The split verdict on the charges and the relatively lenient sentence appeared to strip away the urgency of the government's plans to prosecute dozens of Guantanamo prisoners under special rules widely criticized as unfair.

"What ultimately happened in spite of the system was justice," said civilian defense attorney Charles Swift, who hugged Hamdan after the jurors left the courtroom.

The sentence was a "slap in the face" to the Bush administration and its detention policies, said David Remes, a Washington lawyer who represents 15 Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo.

"They chose to make this a test case. But they never imagined that it would result in such a stunning rebuff," he said.

The chief defense counsel for the Guantanamo tribunals, Army Col. Steve David, said the government failed in its strategy to link Hamdan to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The government attempted to inflame the emotions of the panel," he said. "It didn't work."

"Asking for 30 years to life, not only was ill-advised and wholly inappropriate, but was also soundly rejected by the panel," David said.

Allred said Hamdan, who is from Yemen, would likely be eligible for release through the same administrative review process as other Guantanamo prisoners.

Defense lawyers said Hamdan will have finished his sentence in four months and 22 days.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said he could not speculate whether Hamdan would be released later this year or remain imprisoned as an "enemy combatant."

"I can reassure you that the Defense Department is hard at work on this issue," he said.

The military has not said where Hamdan will serve his sentence. His lawyers protested in court Thursday that Hamdan, as a convict, already had been moved to an empty wing of his prison at the isolated U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

While being convicted of supporting terrorism, Hamdan was acquitted of providing missiles to al-Qaida and knowing his work would be used for terrorism. He also was cleared of being part of al-Qaida's conspiracy to attack the United States -- the most serious charges he faced.

"The decision showed what the jury thought Hamdan was worth," Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo trials, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Hamdan admitted he drove bin Laden around Afghanistan at the time of the 2001 attacks, but said he took the job without knowing the al-Qaida leader was a terrorist. It came as "a big shock," he said, when he learned bin Laden was responsible for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, where Hamdan is from.

At the time of his capture at a roadblock in Afghanistan in November 2001, Hamdan had two shoulder-launched missiles, but he said the car was borrowed and the rockets were not his. The jury found him innocent of carrying the missiles as part of a conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers.

Hamdan expressed regret over the "innocent people" who died in the attacks in the United States, according to a Pentagon transcript. His apology couldn't be heard by reporters because the sound was turned off during part of the proceedings to protect classified information.

The guilty verdict will be appealed automatically to a special military court in Washington. Hamdan also can appeal to U.S. civilian courts, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. Defense lawyers say Hamdan's rights were denied by an unfair process, hastily patched together after the high court ruled that previous tribunal systems violated U.S. and international law.

Prosecutors intend to try about 80 Guantanamo detainees, including 19 already charged.

[Associated Press; By MIKE MELIA]

Associated Press writers Andrew O. Selsky and Ben Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

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