Word: hamdan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Salim Hamdan had spent two years as a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay when he first met Lieut. Commander Charles Swift, his Pentagon-appointed Navy defense lawyer. At the meeting, Swift suggested the possibility of suing President Bush on Hamdan's behalf...
...This lawsuit, will it make you rich?" Hamdan asked after a long pause...
...want to be famous," Hamdan replied. "I just want to get out of here...
Four and a half years later, Hamdan is still at Guantánamo, but Swift's prediction has proved correct. A Yemeni man in his late 30s, Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, was at the center of perhaps the Supreme Court's most important decision on presidential power ever. He is now the first defendant in America's first war-crimes trial since World War II. Hamdan stands accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy. If convicted, he could face life in prison...
...despite landing in the middle of a historic legal drama, Hamdan is largely unknown to the American public. It remains unclear whether he was a dedicated lieutenant of bin Laden's--"a body man for bin Laden," as one of the government's lawyers once described him to me--or, as his defense lawyers claim, little more than a lowly foot soldier. I have been following Hamdan's story since early 2004, when I started writing a book about his case, and have spent hundreds of hours interviewing his lawyers, his family, his mentor and his interrogator. From these conversations...