A jury of US military officers sentenced Osama bin Laden's driver to just 5 1/2 years in prison on Thursday for supporting terrorism, concluding the first US war crimes tribunal since World War II. The sentence delivered by the same six jurors who convicted Yemeni captive Salim Hamdan in the tribunal at Guantanamo prison camp fell far short of the 30 years sought by military prosecutors.
But the Pentagon said Hamdan would continue to be held at the end of his sentence as an "enemy combatant."
The judge gave Hamdan credit for 61 months of the time he has been held at Guantanamo, so he could finish his sentence in five months -- shortly before the next U.S. president takes office. "After that, I don't know what happens," the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, told Hamdan. "I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country.
"Inshallah," the judge added. Hamdan was the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried by the controversial tribunal system set up by the Bush administration to try non-U.S. captives on terrorism charges outside the regular US courts.
The Pentagon said the sentence did not mean Hamdan would soon walk free. "He'll still be retained as an enemy combatant. But as an enemy combatant, he then becomes at that time eligible for the annual review board process to determine whether he's eligible for release or transfer," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.
Hamdan raised both hands high in the air and waved them in a display of elation or victory or both as the guards led him out of the courtroom at the remote U.S. naval base in Cuba. He was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the US invasion that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and sent to Guantanamo in May 2002.
The judge gave him credit for time served since July 1, 2003, the day he was declared eligible for trial. His status changed on that day from battlefield detainee to pretrial detention, the judge said.
The Guantanamo tribunal on Wednesday convicted him of providing material support for terrorism by working as a driver and occasional armed bodyguard and weapons courier for bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1996 to November 2001. But it cleared him of charges of joining al Qaeda's murderous conspiracies. Hamdan apologized in his sentencing hearing for any pain his services to al Qaeda caused its US victims.
"I don't know what could be given or presented to these innocent people who were killed in the US," Hamdan told the jury of six military officers. "I personally present my apologies to them if anything what I did have caused them pain," he said through an Arabic-English interpreter.
Prosecutor John Murphy had asked for a sentence of at least 30 years, long enough "it forecloses any possibility that he reestablishes his ties with terrorists."
Defense lawyer Charles Swift said Hamdan deserved a sentence of less than four years because his cooperation with US intelligence services more than outweighed his culpability as a member of bin Laden's motor pool.