WASHINGTON — Defense attorneys and U.S. authorities had discussed a plea deal for Salim Ahmed Hamdan that would have put Osama bin Laden’s former driver behind bars for at least 10 years, but senior government officials scoffed at what they thought was too short a sentence for an alleged terrorist, according to several people familiar with the talks.
Hamdan received a 5 1/2-year sentence at a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last week, a term that will run out in five months because it includes time served. The unexpectedly lenient sentence took some Pentagon officials by surprise, as prosecutors had asked a military jury to sentence Hamdan to 30 years on a conviction of material support for terrorism.
Now, U.S. officials are preparing for the possibility of having to set Hamdan free or hold him indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said it has always been the Defense Department’s position that detainees could be held as enemy combatants even after acquittal at military commissions or after serving a prison sentence.
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who served as lead prosecutor at Guantanamo until late last year, said there were long-running discussions about a plea deal in Hamdan’s case, adding that he remembered the sentence under consideration ranging from 10 to 12 years. Davis said the deal was never formalized, but that he would have approved such a sentencing range had senior leaders agreed.
“I wasn’t opposed to a plea deal in any case that resulted in a fair sentence,” Davis said. “A deal was proposed and discussed on and off over an extended period of time. With the benefit of hindsight, it might have made sense to settle the case.”
Charles Stimson, who oversaw detainee affairs for the Pentagon at the time, said he spoke with a member of Hamdan’s defense team in late 2006 about the possibility of a plea deal, and he agreed that the case — against a low-level member of al-Qaida — was not worth more than a 10-year sentence. He said he tried to reason with senior Defense and Justice department officials but said “they were stubborn” and “rejected the notion of a ‘mere 10 years.’ I believe the case could have been settled back in 2006 for around 10 years.”
Pentagon officials are pressing forward with other cases they hope will be more indicative of the hard-core terrorism they seek to prosecute, including the cases against Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged co-conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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