Guantanamo Update-Salim Hamdan Sentenced to 66 Months

Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden's driver, was sentenced this week to 66 months in prison for providing material support to terrorism. Since cameras are not permitted in the military tribunals, the sketch to the left, drawn by Janet Hamlim, shows Mr. Hamdan with his legal team. He was acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy. Hamdan was sentenced to 66 months by the same 6 person military jury to hear his case at "Camp Justice" in Guantanamo Bay this week. The trial was the first test of a war crimes tribunal authorized by the Bush administration to try non-U.S. captives on terrorism charges outside the regular civilian and military courts. Prosecutors asked for a life sentence and asked for the jury to make an example of Mr. Hamdan. Clearly, Jurors chose to make Mr. Hamdan another kind of example.

Salim Hamdan was captured in November of 2001 by members of the Afghan Northern Alliance and then turned over to U.S. forces. He was kept in isolation and subjected to coercive interrogation techniques. He was sent to the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002 where a legal debate ensued about whether Mr. Hamdan was a prisoner of war and thus entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention or could be tried by a military commission as an enemy combatant.

In 2006, Mr. Hamdan's case went to the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld when the Court found that the military commission had violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the Geneva Convention. In response to the US Supreme Court ruling, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act designed to overcome the Supreme Court's objections to the military commission. After the military commission dropped charges against Mr. Hamdan in 2007 on the grounds that he was not designated an "unlawful" enemy combatant, the head of the military commission system decided that he was an "illegal enemy combatant" which allowed this trial to proceed.

With credit for the time he has already served in Guantanamo, Mr. Hamdan should have less than five months remaining on his sentence. Kudos to Neil Katyal, the Georgetown Professor who has handled Mr. Hamdan's case through the Supreme Court and the military trial. Professor Katyal gave an interview with NPR about what happens next...