A US military jury sentenced an admitted al Qaeda conspirator from Sudan to 14 more years in prison on Friday but he will serve far less if he keeps his promise to help prosecutors in cases against other Guantanamo captives.

All but 34 months of the sentence will be suspended if defendant Noor Uthman Muhammed keeps his agreement to help prosecute his former colleagues, the judge in the military commission at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base said.

That means Noor, who has already spent nearly nine years in US custody, could go home in December 2013.

The weapons trainer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism. The jury of nine US military officers issued the maximum - but largely symbolic - sentence.

Noor's case is the last one pending in the Guantanamo military commissions that have completed only six trials in nine years, but prosecutors expect to file more charges as soon as Defense Secretary Robert Gates signs off on them.

Noor has valuable information and his plea deal calls for him to assist US civilian prosecutors as well, said the chief prosecutor, Navy Captain John Murphy.

Congress may have constrained Noor's usefulness by passing laws that ban him and other Guantanamo prisoners from going to the United States for any reason, even to testify at trials.

Much of this week's sentencing hearing focused on laying the groundwork to prosecute a "high-value" Guantanamo prisoner Noor was captured with, Abu Zubaydah. The US military calls him a terrorist facilitator who funneled recruits to al Qaeda training camps, then supplied them with money and forged passports as they left to carry out attacks.

"Noor is not a small piece of the puzzle, he's a sliver," said his defense lawyer, Marine Captain Christopher Kannady.

Noor, who is about 44, gave small-arms training at the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000 and sometimes filled in for the camp commander. Defense attorney Howard Cabot described his role as buying milk and eggs and teaching someone to shoot a rifle.

A prosecutor called Khaldan a criminal camp that turned young Muslim men into religious fanatics and tutored them in killing, bomb-making and conducting surveillance on embassies, military bases and airports.

'Terrorist Assembly line'
"It was, simply put, a terrorist assembly line," Navy Lieutenant Commander Arthur Gaston said.

Noor admitted he should have foreseen that some Khaldan graduates would become al Qaeda operatives. Three of them are now being held in the US super-maximum prison in Colorado in connection with bomb plots and the 11 September 2001 conspiracy to crash hijacked planes into US buildings.

Noor never joined al Qaeda or plotted any attacks and should not be punished for the crimes of others, Kannady said.

He said Khaldan was not an al Qaeda camp but was run by a man who fought in the US-backed war to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

Noor was captured at Zubaydah's safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002. He said he cooked and kept house for men who fled the Afghan camps after the US invasion.

The house held a stash of how-to manuals for bombs, poisons and airplane hijackings but Noor likely never read them. He is barely literate and signed his plea deal with a thumbprint.

His tribal leader in Sudan has offered to find Noor a wife and job when he returns, and his extended family pledged support. His lawyers called him "a kind, gentle, respectful man" and said that after nine years in indefinite detention, "Noor can now have some certainty in his life."

(Reuters)

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