Pentagon prosecutors are asking a military judge to reverse himself and reassemble the jury that convicted Osama bin Laden's driver at Guantánamo, seeking to overturn a sentence that could make the first war court convict eligible for release by New Year's Eve.

At issue is a decision at the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II by the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, to award credit of 61 months and eight days for time already served to Salim Hamdan, 40, of Yemen.

Prosecutors claim in a six-page motion, filed Sept. 24 but still not made public on Friday, that military commissions judges aren't entitled to grant credit for time served as "enemy combatants.''

Three military attorneys separately summarized its contents for The Miami Herald.

A military jury convicted Hamdan of providing material support for terrorism on Aug. 6. At the sentencing phase, the panel specifically asked Allred how much credit Hamdan would get for time served. Allred said he had awarded credit of 61 months and eight days, time the judge calculated Hamdan was in a different status than a run-of-the-mill enemy combatant.

The jury of five colonels and lieutenant colonels led by a U.S. Navy captain then issued a 66-month sentence and returned to their different duties in different services across the U.S. military.

''The prosecution believes the judge had no legal authority to grant the credit,'' said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a commissions spokesman. ``As to remedy, they asked the judge to set aside the sentence, reassemble and reinstruct the panel and have them resume sentence deliberations.''

Hamdan's lawyers oppose the motion. Defense attorney Harry Schneider of Seattle said the team would file a response next week. They want to attach a transcript of the Aug. 7 hearing, still being prepared.

The Hamdan challenge is case-specific and theoretically does not determine whether the driver gets to go home from Guantánamo when his current sentence expires in late December.

Bush administration detainee doctrine says that ''enemy combatants'' can be held indefinitely, regardless of a conviction or acquittal at the war court.

Also, under the Military Commissions Act, no war court case creates precedents for any of the others among the 80 cases the Pentagon plans to prosecute.

On Friday, the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. was negotiating Hamdan's post-sentence repatriation with the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

''We don't divulge anything on ongoing bilateral negotiations,'' said Joe Mellott, a State Department spokesman. `"Unfortunately I can't give you anything.''

Meantime, the father of two with a fourth-grade education is the lone military commissions court convict at Guantánamo, confined to a corridor for war criminals inside a steel and cement building in the prison camp complex overlooking the Caribbean.

Defense attorneys have derided his circumstances as "solitary confinement.''

But a prison camps spokeswoman said this week that the military has a program to diminish his isolation: He has been shown a dozen films and has been visited 30 times by Arabic speakers for ''socialization sessions,'' said Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum.

Moreover, he has been in the company of other detainees in the Camp 5 recreation yard where captives are allowed to chat between their open-air cells made of chain-link fencing.

During the recently month of Ramadan, she added, he was moved to an adjacent cellblock for nightly prayers with other detainees, then returned to his cell after the 60- to 90-minute recitations of the Koran ended.

'While Hamdan remains a `category of one,' '' Storum said, "we have gone to great lengths to ensure that he is not linguistically or otherwise isolated . . . in accordance with the intent of the Geneva Conventions.''

Unless one of the 11 combatants already arraigned at a commissions plead guilty, the first chance for company on the convicts corridor would be after the Oct. 28 trial of accused al Qaeda propagandist Ali Hamza al Bahlul.

Bahlul faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted of conspiracy and providing material support to bin Laden for allegedly creating al Qaeda recruiting and propaganda videos.

Bahlul has forbidden his Pentagon-appointed attorney from mounting a defense under a self-styled boycott of the war court, which Bahlul condemns as a sham.

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