Word: hamdan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Cuba Split Decision in Gitmo Case After a trial at Guantánamo Bay, a military panel found Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, guilty of supporting terrorism. Hamdan was acquitted, however, of conspiring with bin Laden to plan the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...
...things didn't turn out as the Administration planned. In 2004, Swift, Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed lawyer, persuaded his client to reject the government's tentative offer for a guilty plea--20 years' imprisonment in exchange for full cooperation, including testifying at the military commissions of other detainees. Together with a young constitutional-law professor named Neal Katyal, Swift built a defense that delayed Hamdan's military tribunal for years as it gradually made its way through the courts. Hamdan's time at Guantánamo was turbulent. Officials characterized him as a problematic prisoner, a rabble rouser who turns every...
...spring of 2006, Hamdan's lawsuit--Hamdan v. Rumsfeld--reached the Supreme Court, which gave Hamdan and his lawyers a sweeping victory. A majority of Justices found that the President's military tribunals were unlawful. In response, the Administration redoubled its efforts, pressing Congress to authorize the military tribunals, which it did by passing the Military Commissions Act during the waning days of the Republican Congress in the fall of 2006. Hamdan was re-charged under the Military Commissions Act and moved into a new maximum-security facility, permitted only an hour or so of indirect contact with other detainees...
...finally facing his day in court, Hamdan is a shell of a man. According to his lawyers, Hamdan can no longer meaningfully assist in his own criminal defense. He is suicidal, hears voices inside his head and talks to himself. A jury of military officers will decide Hamdan's innocence or guilt. On July 21, the presiding judge threw out statements made by Hamdan after his capture in Afghanistan, saying they were obtained under "highly coercive" circumstances. That suggests that the outcome of Hamdan's trial could influence not just how terrorism suspects are treated in the future but also...
Jonathan Mahler is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. His book The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, from which this article is adapted, will be published in August