Salim Hamdan on way from Guantanamo Bay to Yemen - Bush upstages Obama

In a remarkably swift volt face with the aim of false footing the incoming President who has vowed to close Guantanao Bay the Pentagon / State Department have released Salim Hamdan ( age 40 ish) from Guantanamo Bay - apparently he is already on his way to Yemen and is expected to arrive within 48 hours in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, where he will serve out the rest of his military commission sentence, which is set to expire Dec. 27 (Wapo)

Hamdan, , was captured in Afghanistan at a roadblock in as he tried to flee the country with his family in November 2001, and immediately confessed to working for bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 - when bin Laden was in the pay of the US. He claimed he was simply paid as a driver and was not part of any plans to wage war on the US.

Hamdan was convicted of aiding al-Qaeda in August and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison and will be serving the remaining 66 days of his sentence at home.

A jury of six US military officers sentenced Hamdan at Guantanamo's first war-crimes trial earlier this year, and at the time he had already served five years and a month at the Cuba facility.

Hamdan was convicted of supporting terrorism but was acquitted by a jury of military officers of providing missiles to al-Qaida and knowing his work would be used for terrorism. He was also cleared of being part of al-Qaeda's conspiracy to attack the United States although military prosecutors who portrayed him as a hardened al-Qaeda warrior. He was the second detainee to face a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and became the second man convicted of terrorism charges under the bogus legal procedures that were used at the military base. (Australian David Hicks was the first)

The decision to extradite Hamdan followed a judge’s rejection of an appeal by prosecutors to extend his sentence by ignoring the five years he had spent in the jail in Cuba as an “enemy combatant”.

The trial (?) also had to face the fact that Hamdan was convicted is that providing material support for terrorism was not an offense triable by military courts at the time Hamdan committed it, an apparent violation of the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws (assuming that clause applies at Guantanamo). (NYT)

The trial (?) in which he was convicted included secret evidence, hearsay evidence, and evidence obtained through coercive interrogations during which Hamdan had no right to remain silent.

Paradoxically Hamdan's defense attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, *** suggested that Hamdan had offered to help U.S. forces in a significant way soon after he was captured, but U.S. forces failed to exploit the intelligence that Hamdan provided.

Hamdan's attorneys were ready to fight claims that their client could be held indefinitely, a case that probably would have brought Hamdan back to the Supreme Court to challenge his detention. Although Army Maj. Rick Morehouse said Hamdan was on a Detainee Socialization Management Plan , "To avoid linguistic isolation and solitary confinement.''

*** Lt. Cmdr. Mizer filed a brief in Hamdan's Guantánamo military commissions case, alleging that senior White House appointees to the Pentagon are orchestrating war crimes trials to help Republicans in the upcoming 2008 presidential campaign. Mizer argues that the blatant political interference makes it impossible for Hamdan to get a fair trial. (Miami Herald)

See broken Laws broken Lives Blog - Medical Evidence of Torture by the US run by Physicians for Human Rights (report pdf)