GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — The military jurors who gave Osama bin Laden’s driver a light sentence want him freed from Guantanamo once he completes it in December and were frustrated to learn the military can hold him indefinitely, one of the panelists said Wednesday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the juror said that the panel of six American military officers did not learn until the trial ended Aug. 7 that the Pentagon retains the right to hold Salim Hamdan as an “enemy combatant,” even after he completes his sentence.
“After all the effort that we put in to get somebody a fair trial . . . and then to say no matter what we did it didn’t matter — I don’t see that as a positive step,” the juror said in the telephone interview.
The juror cannot be identified because the judge at the first war-crimes trial since the end of World War II declared that the panelists’ identities must be kept secret.
The jury convicted Hamdan of supporting terrorism but acquitted him of conspiracy. His sentence of 5 1/2 years, with credit for most of his time served, means he is eligible for release in December.
The Defense Department insists it has a right to hold “enemy combatants” who are considered to pose a threat to the United States — even those cleared of charges or given short sentences in the military tribunals at Guantanamo.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, declined to comment specifically on Hamdan’s case. “The Defense Department continues to assess the situation,” he said.
Military prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 30 years to life in prison, but the juror said the evidence did not support their portrayal of Hamdan as a hardened al-Qaeda warrior.
Some of the most compelling evidence against that portrayal came in writing from confessed Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, another Guantanamo inmate, who dismissed Hamdan as a “nuts and bolts guy . . . not a key player,” the juror said.
“I think it was generally our opinion that (Hamdan) made some bad mistakes in his life that led him down a path that turned out to be a bad one,” the juror said.
“Once he was in it, I don’t see that it was that easy to get out.”
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