The Law of War

On 8 November 2004, a federal court halted the proceeding of Salim Ahmed
Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. Hamdan was to be the first Guantanamo detainee tried
before a military commission. Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [44] that no competent
tribunal had found that Hamdan was not a prisoner of war under the Geneva
Conventions.
By 29 March 2005, all detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base had
received hearings before Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The hearings
resulted in the release of 38 detainees, and confirmed the enemy combatant
status of 520 detainees. Reuters reported on 15 June 2005 only four detainees
had been charged and that Joseph Margulies, one of the lawyers for the
detainees said "The (reviews) are a sham ... They mock this nation's commitment
to due process, and it is past time for this mockery to end".
Yaser Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001. He was taken to
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, but was transferred to jails in Virginia and South Carolina
after it became known that he was a U.S. citizen. On 23 September 2004, the United
States Justice Department agreed to release Hamdi to Saudi Arabia, where he is also a
citizen, on the condition that he gave up his U.S. citizenship. The deal also bars Hamdi
from visiting certain countries and to inform Saudi officials if he plans to leave the
kingdom. He was a party to a Supreme Court decision Hamdi v. Rumsfeld which issued
a decision on 28 June 2004, repudiating the U.S. government's unilateral assertion of
executive authority to suspend the constitutional protections of individual liberty of a
U.S. citizen. The Court recognized the power of the government to detain unlawful
combatants, but ruled that detainees must have the ability to challenge their detention
before an impartial judge. Though no single opinion of the Court commanded a majority,
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