GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, (Reuters) – A U.S. military tribunal yesterday sentenced Osama bin Laden’s former cook to 14 years in prison, but he is expected to serve far less under a plea deal that remains secret.
The defendant, Sudanese captive Ibrahim al Qosi, pleaded guilty last month in the war crimes court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base to charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.
Qosi, a 50-year-old with a white beard, has been held at Guantanamo for more than eight years.
Military officials said it could be several months before his full plea agreement is made public. But the al-Arabiya television network based in Dubai quoted unidentified sources as saying it caps his sentence at two years.
Qosi acknowledged that he knew al Qaeda was a terrorist group when he ran one of the kitchens in bin Laden’s Star of Jihad compound in Afghanistan.
Qosi, who met bin Laden in Sudan and traveled with him to Afghanistan, also admitted helping the al Qaeda leader escape U.S. forces in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.
He said he had no involvement in or prior knowledge of terrorist attacks.
Qosi was the first Guantanamo captive convicted under the administration of President Barack Obama, whose efforts to shut down the detention camp have been blocked by Congress.
His sentencing hit a snag because, according to the judge, the U.S. military ignored orders to develop a plan specifying how prisoners would serve their sentences after conviction in the Guantanamo tribunals.
COMMUNAL CONFINEMENT
Qosi wanted to avoid serving his in solitary confinement. His plea deal required the convening authority overseeing the trial to recommend that Qosi serve his time in Camp Four, where detainees live communally under fewer restrictions than in the other camps.
