Navy judge refuses to re-sentence Bin Laden driver

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Thursday, 10.30.08
Navy judge refuses to re-sentence Bin Laden driver
A judge has spurned a Pentagon prosecutor's request to revisit the 66-month sentence of Osama bin Laden's driver on grounds he didn't have authority to grant credit for time serve

[e-mail]
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A war court judge has flatly refused a Pentagon effort to revisit the soon-to-expire prison sentence of Osama bin Laden's driver at the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.

Navy Capt. Keith Allred ruling means the prison sentence for Salim Hamdan, 40, will end by New Year's under a military jury sentence that granted him time served for more than 61 months in prison at this remote U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

The jury of five colonels and lieutenant colonels, led by a U.S. Navy captain, convicted Hamdan Aug. 6 of providing material support for terror for working as Bin Laden's $200-a-month driver in Afghanistan until his capture in November 2001.

It cleared him of a more serious charge of conspiracy.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/748...

[amdezurik]

1. that judge needs to avoid small planes

and lonely stretches of road from now on...

[Piewhacket]

2. The conflict is....

that one does not cheer a convicted terrorist.

Yet what we can do is to recognize that our society aspires to
provide rule of law, not of men, and that due process of law
is intended to assure each of us is convicted only upon
the evidence of what we have done and that we are punished
only for that offense and only in proportion to the wrong
committed. This is the foundation of freedom, the promise
of America.

The safeguard of this is that an executive
official, such as the prosecutor, does not get to decide such
things, the judicial officer decides them.

Yet in the military the problem is, the executive can actually
be the judicial officers military superior, a potentially serious
conflict.

So when we see senior military officers acting in the capacity of
judges who display the characteristics of fairness and independent
judgement, as their HONOR AND DUTY REQUIRES, regardless of personal
consequence, now THAT is worth cheering.

I have previously said, and here is another example of it,
not all acts of courage in the military occur on the battlefield.

I therefore am prepared to salute Navy Capt. Keith Allred and his fellow
judges for showing us by example that they are men of honor, duty,
principle, and courage,and obedient to the rule of law, rather than of men.


Salute.

[bertman]

4. Piewhacket, you said it just right.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R