The Bush administration, in an about face, has decided to release Salim Hamdan, the former driver for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, from detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
Hamdan has emerged as the center-piece for the Bush administration's detainee policy in the so-called war on terror. Hamdan was captured in Afghanistan in 2001. According to military accounts, he had several missiles in the trunk of his vehicle, was transferred to U.S. prison facilities in Afghanistan and ultimately to Guantanamo Bay where he has been for the past 7 years.
He was tried initially under a presidentially-mandated war crimes tribunal, but later, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tribunal was unconstitutional, Hamdan faced a new trial under a system established by Congress.
A military jury earlier this year repudiated by the Bush administration and ultimately handed down a very minor sentence, essentially time served plus 5 months.
The Bush administration, in its waning days, has backed away from its position Hamdan could be held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” and moved to release him to his home country of Yemen where he will serve the remainder of his sentence before being released to has family.