Vol. 72/No. 33      August 25, 2008

Hamdan was a driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to five and a half years, which includes the five years and one month time served, leaving five months left in his sentence.

Department of Defense prosecutors had asked the court for a sentence of 30 years or more based on conspiracy charges they had filed originally. Although Hamdan’s sentence is set to expire in January, U.S. officials will have the option to continue to hold him as an “enemy combatant” for as long as they see fit. Hamdan was declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” by a military judge in December 2007.

“That’s always been on our minds in terms of a scenario we could face,” said Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman. “He will serve his time for the conviction and then he will still be an enemy combatant, and as an enemy combatant the process for potential transfer or release will apply.”

The trial was conducted under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The judge and jury were military personnel appointed by the Pentagon. Hearsay as well as statements obtained through beatings, threats, and some forms of torture were all permissible forms of evidence for the prosecution.

Pentagon officials pointed to the short sentence Hamdan received as evidence of the objectivity of the court. Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo trials, said, “there is a perception that trying people in front of the military was going to be a rubber-stamp process.” He pointed to the Hamdan trial as proof otherwise.

Similarly, Republican presidential contender John McCain said, “The fact that the jury did not find Hamdan guilty of all of the charges brought against him demonstrates that the jury weighed the evidence carefully.”

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized the Pentagon for not having convicted Hamdan sooner. “That the Hamdan trial—the first military commission trial with a guilty verdict since 9/11—took several years of legal challenges to secure a conviction for material support for terrorism underscores the dangerous flaws in the legal framework,” said Obama.

Socialist presidential candidate Róger Calero called for shutting down the prison camp at Guantánamo and releasing all those incarcerated there. He demanded an immediate end to all attacks on workers rights, from the use of secret evidence, to conspiracy charges, to arbitrary “enemy combatant” status.  
 
 
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