GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A U.S. military jury gave Osama bin Laden's driver a surprisingly light sentence on Thursday, making him eligible for release in just five months despite the prosecutors' request for at least a 30-year sentence to deter would-be terrorists.
Salim Hamdan's sentence of 5 1/2 years, including five years and a month already served at Guantanamo Bay, fell far short of the life sentence he could have gotten for aiding terrorism by driving and guarding bin Laden. It now goes for mandatory review to a Pentagon official who can shorten the sentence but not extend it.
It remains unclear what will happen to Hamdan once his sentence is served, since the U.S. military has said it won't release anyone who still represents a threat. The judge, navy Capt. Keith Allred, said Hamdan, who is from Yemen, would likely be eligible for the same administrative review process as other Guantanamo prisoners.
Defence lawyers said they expect Hamdan will be let go in five months. "It was all for show if Mr. Hamdan does not go home in December," said Charles Swift, one of Hamdan's civilian lawyers.
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 hand-picked by the Pentagon for the first U.S. war crimes trial in a half-century.
Hamdan was found guilty of supporting terrorism by serving as bin Laden's armed bodyguard and driver while knowing the al-Qaida leader was plotting U.S. attacks. But he was found not guilty 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 military has not said where Hamdan will serve his sentence, but the commander of the detention centre, navy Rear Admiral David Thomas, said last week that convicted prisoners will be held apart from the general detainee population at the isolated U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.
"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," the judge told Hamdan.
Hamdan, dressed in a charcoal sports coat and white robe, responded: "God willing."
Military prosecutors had said even a life sentence would be fitting in order to send an example to would-be terrorists.
But the jury, which acquitted Hamdan of the most serious charges, apparently agreed with the judge, who called him only a "small player" in al-Qaida.
"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.
Referring to the decks of cards the U.S. military has distributed with images of most-wanted terrorists, Davis said: "Hamdan would be the two of clubs."
Still, the sentence should give skeptics some pause, Davis said, by showing that military juries are independent and carefully evaluate evidence presented in the war crimes trials.
"There is a perception that trying people in front of the military was going to be a rubber-stamp process," Davis said. "This shows they are conscientious, following instructions and are making rational decisions."
The chief defence 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."
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.
Still, he kept the job, Hamdan said. He needed the money, and couldn't go home.
"It's true there are work opportunities in Yemen, but not at the level I needed after I got married and not to the level of ambitions that I had in my future," said Hamdan, who has a fourth-grade education.
Reading a prepared statement in Arabic, he said he had a "relationship of respect" with bin Laden, as would any other driver in the al-Qaida motor pool. Hamdan has said he drove mainly low-profile pickup trucks with tinted windows because his boss shunned the Toyota Land Cruisers favoured by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.
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.
"I personally present my apologies to them if anything that I did has caused them pain," Hamdan said.
Prosecutor John Murphy had pressed for a sentence stiff enough to dissuade potential terrorists from joining the fight.
"You have found him guilty of offences that have made our world extremely unsafe and dangerous," Murphy said. "The government asks you to deliver a sentence that will absolutely keep our society safe from him."
The judge instructed jurors to consider the nearly seven years Hamdan has spent in confinement, and that he is the sole supporter of his wife and two children.
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. Defence lawyers say Hamdan's rights were denied by an unfair process, hastily patched together after the court ruled that previous tribunal systems violated U.S. and international law.
"The problem is the law was specifically written after the fact to target Mr. Hamdan," said Swift.
Deputy White House spokesman Tony Fratto on Wednesday disputed allegations of injustice, saying Hamdan had received a fair trial and that prosecutors will now press ahead with other war crimes trials. Prosecutors intend to try about 80 Guantanamo detainees, including 19 already charged.
