Bin Laden's driver gets less than 6 yrs

5:57a.m. 8th August 2008

A military jury sentenced Osama bin Laden's ex-driver Salim Hamdan to five years and six months in prison for supporting terrorism.

Taking into account time Hamdan has already been incarcerated, the sentence adds only an additional five months, although the Pentagon has indicated it has no plans to release him.

Earlier, Hamdan apologised for innocents killed and appealed for leniency.

"It was a sorry or sad thing to see innocent people killed," Salim Hamdan said at his sentencing hearing at the US Navy detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I don't know what could be given or presented to these innocent people who were killed in the US," he said, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter.

"I personally present my apologies to them if anything what I did have caused them pain."

But prosecutors maintained that the Yemeni is a dangerous man and said he should get at least 30 years in a US prison for his work for the al-Qaeda chief.

"You should consider life sentencing possibilities when you consider the facts in this case," prosecutor John Murphy told the court, adding that Hamdan should be imprisoned for "not less than 30 years."

A tough sentence will bring "a consequence so great that others will think again before they ally themselves with Osama bin Laden or the next Osama bin Laden," Murphy said.

"Do justice for all the victims of material support for terrorism in this case."

Hamdan's sentencing hearing came after he was convicted Wednesday of providing support to al-Qaeda, in the first military trial of a detainee at Guantanamo.

Wearing a white turban and tan coat as he stood at a table next to his defence lawyers, Hamdan appeared calm as he spoke. He said he had worked for bin Laden because he needed to support his family but had serious misgivings over time about his employer.

Hamdan and his lawyers asked the jurors for leniency after the Yemeni was cleared on more serious charges that he conspired and plotted attacks for al-Qaeda, and pointed to the case of Australian David Hicks.

Hicks pleaded guilty in Guantanamo to a similar charge in a plea deal and was given seven years, which was then suspended to nine months for time already served.

"And they have sentenced him (Hicks) to nine months and the term of his prison is over with in his own country, and he is free with his family right now, with his children," he said.

Hamdan, aged around 40 and with a fourth grade education, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo for five years.

The level of his involvement with al-Qaeda terror activities while working for bin Laden has been a key point of debate in the trial.

Hamdan addressed the six-member jury Thursday, saying how his view of bin Laden changed over time as he realised his boss was responsible for deadly terror attacks.

He expressed remorse for the innocent people killed by al-Qaeda as he addressed military jurors at his sentencing hearing a day after he was convicted for supporting terrorism.

"It was a sorry or sad thing to see innocent people killed. I don't know what could be given or presented to these innocent people who were killed in the US," Hamdan said in Arabic through an interpreter.

"I personally present my apologies to them if anything what I did have caused them pain."

The Navy officer presiding over the case, Keith Allred, has ruled that Hamdan would be given credit for those five years when he is sentenced.

But the US Defence Department has made clear on that whatever his sentence, he will be kept in prison for an indefinite period.

"In the near term at least, we would consider him an enemy combatant and still a danger, and would like (that he) still be detained for some period of time," Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said this week.

The sentencing hearing comes after the first full trial before the controversial tribunals set up by President George W Bush's administration to try suspects in the "war on terror".

The Bush administration hopes Hamdan's trial will show critics at home and abroad that the Guantanamo tribunals, which operate under different rules than regular civilian or military courts, offer the accused a fair process.

The military commissions were invalidated in 2006 by the Supreme Court, only to be restored a few months later by the US Congress.

They have since been struck by a series of legal battles and hitches - including a June Supreme Court decision that granted foreign terror suspects captured abroad the right to challenge their detention in US courts - that had pushed back the opening of Hamdan's lawsuit, and perhaps others to come.