Terror convict Hamdan could be free soon
Published 10:39 pm Thursday, August 7, 2008
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — A military jury imposed a surprisingly lenient sentence of 5 1/2 years on Osama bin Laden’s driver Thursday for a war crime that could have brought him a life term.
The sentence — all but about four months of which has been served by Salim Hamdan — appeared to be a rebuke by the six senior military officers who comprised the jury of the Bush administration’s tribunal for trying terror suspects.
Justice Department lawyer John Murphy had urged the jurors to send the Yemeni to prison for 30 years to life after his conviction Wednesday for providing material support to terrorism. Hamdan was a driver and bodyguard for al-Qaida.
“Take one second to think of the victims of Mr. Hamdan’s support of terrorism,” Murphy said in a closing argument that cast Hamdan as a committed extremist and included graphic images of terrorist attacks. “Your sentence will be their justice. Your work is our justice, and you shouldn’t flinch from it.”
Hamdan, relieved to know his fate after nearly seven years in U.S. custody here and in Afghanistan, thanked the jurors for their decision.
The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, had said he would credit the Yemeni defendant with at least five years, meaning Hamdan would be eligible for release soon — if not for the Bush administration’s vow to hold all those it has declared “enemy combatants” for the duration of the war on terror.
But the sentence could intensify pressure on the Bush administration or its successor to revise that policy. Habeas attorneys trying to get recognition of Guantanamo detainee rights in U.S. federal courts are expected to bring the case to the U.S. District Court in Washington to seek Hamdan’s release from Guantanamo once his sentence is complete, on grounds of fairness.
