Osama bin Laden's former cook, Ibrahim al Qosi, is following in the footsteps of Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur, Salim Hamdan. Yesterday a judge sentenced al-Qosi to 14 years for material support for terrorism. Al-Qosi won't be serving that sentence, though, because he's already secured a secret plea deal that will send him home by 2012. Carol Rosenberg reports:
This week's three-day sentencing hearing capped the first plea deal of the Obama administration and sought to close the book on one of the first captives brought here when the prison camps opened in January 2002. Qosi was also among the first captives charged in August 2004 when the Bush administration unveiled its first attempt at a war court, which the Roberts Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.
The al Arabiya satellite channel reported last month that Qosi was secretly promised he'd return to his native Sudan after two more years here. War court spokesmen refuse to confirm it.
So the first conviction secured through the Obama administration's return to the rule of law with revised military commissions involves a "secret plea deal." Transparency! If the al Arabiya report is accurate, with time served, that means al-Qosi will have served about a decade's worth of time.
Just to put that in perspective, that's three years shorter than the average sentence in civilian court for similar charges, which is 13 years. So you have secrecy, unfairness, a sense of illegitimacy and leniency all in one. It's difficult to tout this as an example of the system working, and as with Hamdan, it's kind of hard to get triumphant about handing one of bin Laden's manservants a short prison sentence. I'm assuming the guy who does his dry cleaning is next, right after they're done trying the former child soldier.
