EX-Bin Laden Driver Gets 5 1/2 Years
By Mike Melia
Associated Press Writer
August 7, 2008
CBNNews.com - GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - An ex-driver for Osama bin Laden has been sentenced to 5 1/2 years for supporting terrorism.
The verdict was announced by the same panel of six U.S. military officers that convicted Salim Hamdan of supporting terrorism. He was acquitted of charges that he conspired in terrorist attacks.
Earlier, Hamdan pleaded with a military jury to spare him from a life in prison, saying Thursday that he worked as Osama bin Laden's driver only because he needed a job. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of no less than 30 years.
He pleaded for leniency earlier Thursday, saying he regretted the loss of "innocent lives" in bin Laden's attacks.
Hamdan, a Yemeni man with a fourth-grade education, was convicted by the six Pentagon-appointed jurors of aiding terrorism by chauffeuring bin Laden around Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But Hamdan said he merely had a "relationship of respect" with bin Laden, as would any other employee.
"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," he said, reading in Arabic from a prepared statement.
Verdict: Guilty
The five-man, one-woman jury found Hamdan guilty of aiding terrorism but acquitted him of conspiracy Wednesday at the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
Under tribunal rules, the jury imposes the sentence, not the judge. Their verdict does not have to be unanimous, and a review by a Pentagon legal official can reduce the sentence but not increase it.
The military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, told jurors they could impose any sentence from life in prison to no punishment. He instructed jurors to take into account the nearly seven years Hamdan has spent in confinement and that he is the sole supporter of his wife and two children.
The verdict will be appealed automatically to a special military court in Washington. Hamdan can then appeal to U.S. civilian courts as well.
The military has not said where Hamdan would serve a sentence, but the commander of the detention center, Navy Rear Adm. 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.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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