The seven commissioners who voted on the sentencing panel, including five senior judges, are now thought likely to go much further than this by formulating across-the-board changes to the recommended sentences.
In an e-mail to The New York Times, Mr. Khadr's military lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, said he planned to tell the sentencing panel that his client is a "decent young man" who "deserves a first chance at a meaningful life".
In the UK, the government's own sentencing advisory panel has recently questioned the proportionality of sentencing for drugs offences.
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Rejecting a prosecution request for a severe sentence, a panel of military officers sentenced the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden to five and a half years in prison on Thursday.
After just over an hour of deliberations on the sentence, the panel of six senior military officers returned to the windowless tribunal room with their sentence on the single war crimes charge on which they convicted him, providing material support to a terrorist organization.
In its sentence, the panel accepted the prosecution argument that the crime amounted to cold-blooded murder and an ignoble betrayal of a mission to maintain security in a province bitterly divided between Serbs and Albanians.
In sending the case back to the judge for a new sentence, the panel said it was not expressing any view on whether a new condition might be found that could replace the TV ban or whether Mr. Bello should, in fact, be sent to prison.
In 2007, the United States Sentencing Commission, a panel that advises federal courts on appropriate prison terms based on legislation, reduced the average sentence for crack cocaine possession to 8 years, 10 months from 10 years, 1 month.
The witnesses all expressed hope that their stories would be considered at sentencing by the panel of five judges overseeing the trial of Mounir Motassadeq, who is accused of aiding the Hamburg cell of Al Qaeda involved in the Sept. 11 plot.
This restorative process may occur in a victim impact panel, sentencing circle, or community conference. 1) I have a dream that we won't have to talk about 'restorative justice' because it will be understood that true justice is about restoration, and about transformation.
Mr Tadic has appealed against both verdict and sentence to another panel of the tribunal's judges.
