Bush Administration Foiled in Attempt to Extend Hamdan’s Sentence

[WSJ_law_blog]

This just in: Another victory for Salim Hamdan — the former driver for Osama bin Laden who faced a Gitmo military commission over the summer. And another loss for the Bush administration.



Salim Hamdan at the legal complex of the U.S. Military Commissions, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, July 24, 2008. (AP/Janet Hamlin)

As the WSJ reported two weeks ago, prosecutors filed a motion asking that Hamdan?s sentence be reconsidered, arguing that the military judge lacked authority to credit Hamdan for the time he served in pretrial confinement. Without such credit, Hamdan, who was captured in November 2001, would face an extra five years. With the credit, however, his time is up in December. (Whether he goes home is another matter.)

But today, the WSJ reports, a military judge rejected the Bush administration’s move to extend Hamdan’s time in detainment. According to the story, Captain Keith Allred, the military judge, said in a two-paragraph order that he had read the filings and legal citations, as well as reviewed the sentencing hearing transcript. “The prosecution motion to reconsider, reassemble, reinstruct and re-announce a sentence is denied,” he wrote.
“The administration’s effort to vacate the Aug. 7 sentence and require the [jurors] to travel back to Guantanamo to resentence Mr. Hamdan never made sense to us and it apparently did not make much sense to the military judge either,” Harry Schneider, a civilian attorney for Hamdan, told the WSJ.

Prosecutors, who were at Guantanamo Thursday for other cases, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Although Hamdan’s punishment is slated to end by January, notes the WSJ, the government maintains it may continue to detain him indefinitely thereafter, on grounds that he remains an “enemy combatant” who could take up arms against U.S. forces.