Bin Laden's driver sentenced to 5 1/2 years

With credit, he could be released within months

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - A military jury imposed a surprisingly lenient sentence of 5 1/2 years on Osama bin Laden's driver yesterday 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 made up the jury of the Bush administration's tribunal for trying terror suspects.

Sleep-derivation was used in interrogations after ban, documents show. A4.

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 Qaeda.

"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."

The defense had argued for no more than 45 months.

Defense lawyer Charlie Swift, the retired Navy officer who was assigned to represent Hamdan five years ago and took his challenge of the tribunal to the US Supreme Court and won, asked the jurors to keep in mind that American justice is based on law, not vengeance.

"One of the things that makes us unique is we don't sentence based on passion; we sentence based on law," Swift said in his closing argument in the sentencing phase of the trial.

Hamdan, relieved to know his fate after nearly seven years in US custody here and in Afghanistan, thanked the jurors for their decision.

The judge, Navy Captain Keith J. 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 US federal courts are expected to bring the case to the US District Court in Washington to seek Hamdan's release from Guantanamo once his sentence is complete, on grounds of fairness.

"David Hicks got nine months. Then he was released. He wasn't kept until the end of the war on terror," said Nancy Hollander, an attorney for a high-value detainee here and an activist with the John Adams Project, which provides pro bono representation of terrorism suspects.

Hicks, an Australian accused of the same material support offense, was freed last year after a plea bargain approved by the tribunal chief, Convening Authority Susan J. Crawford. The deal was seen as a favor to then-Prime Minister John Howard during a reelection campaign he ultimately lost.

Why the jury decided on the 5 1/2-year sentence wasn't clear, as its votes and deliberations are secret and the tribunal chief prosecutor, Army Colonel Lawrence Morris, has said that jurors would not be allowed to speak with media because they might be called for duty again.

The government case against Hamdan was based almost entirely on information the defendant gave willingly in interviews with at least 40 US government interrogators in the first two years of his captivity. Swift said that information was of vital importance to intelligence circles yet ultimately used against the cooperative captive.

Hamdan was acquitted of conspiracy Wednesday, the more serious of two alleged offenses and the only charge brought against him in the Pentagon's original war-crimes indictment in 2004. That case was scuttled when the Supreme Court quashed the tribunal as unconstitutional in a June 2006 ruling.

Congress passed the Military Commissions Act three months later, replicating the war court the justices had deemed illegitimate because of its unilateral creation by President Bush in November 2001.

Hamdan, whose age is estimated between 38 and 40, had read a statement to the jurors in which he expressed remorse for his association with bin Laden.

"I don't know what could be given or presented to these innocent people who were killed in the US," he said, according to a courtroom translation from his native Arabic. "I personally present my apologies to them in anything what I did have caused them pain."

Hamdan looked wistful when several still photographs were shown on courtroom video displays of his two daughters, now aged 9 and 7, in pigtails and denim overalls.

The jurors also saw a four-minute video filmed in Yemen of Hamdan's wife, Saboura, dressed in the Muslin abaya and hijab that covered all but her eyes. She talked of the hardships of raising children without a spouse or income.

Hamdan's devotion to his family should ensure he never returns to extremism, Swift said in his sentencing argument.