ABSTRACT
On 29 June 2006, the US Supreme Court issued one of its most important decisions of the past decade in the case of Hamdan v Rumsfeld,1 holding that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison were entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. The successful plaintiff, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, is most frequently identified as the personal driver for Osama Bin Laden prior to the events of 11 September 2001. That case would never have reached the Supreme Court but for the exemplary professional judgment exercised by Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, the military lawyer assigned to Hamdan at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, who defied the terms of his appointment – which was limited for the purpose of negotiating a guilty plea. Here is Swift’s explanation, given to an interviewer for National Public Radio, for why he acted as he did:
Swift: I was surprised when the letter conditioned my access to Mr. Hamdan on a guilty plea . . . [T]he letter made quite plain that you would see the prosecutor to get access, and that if for some reason you were unable to negotiate a guilty plea, [then] that access could be cut off.
