Background
The plaintiff in this case is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a citizen of Yemen and a bodyguard and chauffeur for Osama bin Laden, who had been formerly employed to work on an agricultural project that Osama Bin Laden had created to support the people of Afghanistan. Hamdan was captured by militia forces during the invasion of Afghanistan and turned over to the United States, then sent to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. In July 2004, he was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, and the Bush administration made arrangements to try him before a military commission authorized under Military Commission Order No. 1 of March 21, 2002. Hamdan filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that the military commission convened to try him was illegal and lacked the protections required under the Geneva Conventions and United States Uniform Code of Military Justice. Following the Supreme Court ruling on another case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan was granted a review before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which determined that he was eligible for detention by the United States as an enemy combatant or person of interest.
The defendants in this case include many United States government officials allegedly responsible for Hamdan's detention; as is customary, the short name of the case includes only the first-named defendant, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Read more about this topic: Hamdan V. Rumsfeld
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)