The United States Military at Guantánamo Bay announced that after seven years of imprisonment Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, will be released from confinement. He will serve out the remainder of his four-month term, of which he is expected to serve for one month, in Yeman, according to officials. He was held since his arrest in Afghanistan in 2001. Hamdan was tried and convicted by a military court of, not conspiracy terrorist charges against the U.S., but a lesser crime– material support for terrorist. The reduced verdict was a major setback for Pentagon officials of the Bush administration, who had sought to detain him indefinitely as an enemy combatant against the U.S.

Hamdan’s case was a test case for the Bush administration’s military commissions program, one that ultimately failed in the U.S. justice system after seven years of holding prisoners without formally charging them or letting many of them obtain legal council. Lawyers working on behalf of Mr. Hamdan won a landmark Supreme Court case in 2006 that found the military commission system unconstitutional and in violation of United States military law and the Geneva Conventions, forcing Congress to rewrite the rules.

Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington said “We hope that this will be a positive first step to the transfer of the remaining detainees.”

With the incoming Obama administration indicating over the past few months that they were not in favor of Guantánamo Bay, it is perceived by some that the Bush administration will move to “clean up” issues at the prison, facilitate potential releases, and leave a minimal situation for the incoming administration to grapple with. Others say this the beginning of an effort by the Bush Administration to close down and rid Guantánamo of any potential evidence of wrongdoing that could result in a public relations nightmare for the legacy of the Bush administration.

Reports indicate that approximately 250 prisoners remain at Guantánamo, and approximately 100 of them are from Yemen. As a detainee, Hamdan was granted few legal rights, and he has claimed that he was beaten and kept in isolation for months. Prior to today’s news, The United States government has issued statements saying that they had concerns about returning detainees to Yemen because of that country’s detention policies and record on terrorism.