GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba, 10 November 2004 — A US federal court has ruled Osama Bin Laden’s driver was entitled to a hearing to determine whether he is a prisoner of war, a landmark decision that throws into question plans to try alleged terrorists as enemy combatants.
US authorities consider all 550 detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay “enemy combatants,” a status that affords them fewer legal protections than prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The prisoners from more than 40 countries have been held for nearly three years, but few have had access to attorneys and only four have been charged.
US District Judge James Robertson’s ruling in Washington on Monday halted the pretrial proceedings for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen, after his lawyers filed a petition challenging his status as an enemy combatant and the commission’s jurisdiction.
The Justice Department said it would seek an immediate stay of the ruling and appeal it.
Hamdan was taken captive in Afghanistan and held there for six months before being transferred to the US outpost where he was kept in solitary confinement for eight months.
He is one of the four enemy combatants who has been charged. He faces charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, murder and terrorism but says he never supported terrorism. He was to have been the first detainee tried in the commissions, or trials, on Dec. 7.
Robertson’s decision was the first time a federal court halted legal proceedings before US military commissions, resurrected from World War II. No trials have been held, although tentative trial dates for three other detainees have been offered. The judge rejected the US government’s contention that Hamdan and other detainees are not prisoners of war but enemy combatants.
