Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 8:22:13 AM
The US has released Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, to serve out the rest of the sentence
he received from a military tribunal earlier this year. Hamdan helped
change the direction of detention in the war on terror with his appeals
in the federal court system and embarrassed the Pentagon by getting a
light sentence and avoiding conviction on the most serious charges
brought against him
I wouldn’t bet on that. Yemen has a habit of either releasing
terrorists on their own recognizance or allowing them to “escape”.
Intel agents believe that al-Qaeda has started to regroup in Yemen,
and Hamdan may find a new job if the government there decides to treat
him as kindly as they have other suspected AQ operatives.
The Bush administration had little choice, however. His light
sentence of 66 months would have meant Hamdan would have walked away
free in January. The Pentagon insists that it has the right to keep
detainees in custody if the DoD determines that they represent a danger
to the US. That may sound good in theory, but the Bush administration
didn’t look enthusiastic about telling that to a federal judge, and by the end of January the new President, Barack Obama, would have been calling those shots anyway.
As I wrote in August, it may be that the sentence accurately
reflected Hamdan’s status with AQ as just a flunky with a map and a
car. Hopefully, we’ll see that when Yemen lets him run free within
minutes of his arrival. Either way, unfortunately, we’re going to find
out, and probably sooner than later.