The Navy lawyer who won the Hamdan decision is punished by the Pentagon, Truthout reports:
Newark - The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
Under the military's "up-or-out" promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing a 20-year career of military service.
A Pentagon appointee, Swift embraced the alleged al-Qaida's sympathizer's defense with a classic defense lawyer's zeal, casting his captive client as an innocent victim in the dungeon of King George, a startling analogy for the attorney whose commander-in-chief is President (George) Bush.
"It was a pleasure to serve," said Swift, who added that he would defend Salim Hamdan again, even if he knew he would have to leave the Navy earlier than he wanted.
"All I ever wanted was to make a difference — and in that sense, I think my career and personal satisfaction has been beyond my dreams," he said.
Swift, a Seattle University Law School graduate, also said he will continue to defend Hamdan as a civilian. The Seattle law firm of Perkins Coie, which provided pro-bono legal work in Hamdan's habeas corpus petition, has agreed to support Swift's defense of Hamdan in civilian life, he said.
Hamdan, 36, who has only a fourth-grade education, was captured along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan while fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, launched in reprisal for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He admits working as bin Laden's $200-a-month driver on a Kandahar farm but said he never joined al-Qaida and never fought anyone.
Still at Guantánamo as an enemy combatant, Hamdan halted his war-crimes trial by challenging the format's constitutionality through civilian courts.
The justices ruled in June that Bush overstepped his constitutional authority by creating ad hoc military tribunals for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, sending the Pentagon back to the drawing board for the trials.
In the end, it developed a system very similar to those struck down, setting the stage for a likely new challenge this session.
In the opinion of Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, Swift was "a no-brainer for promotion," given his devotion to the Navy, the law and his client.
But, he said, Swift is part of a long line of Navy defense lawyers "of tremendous distinction" who were not made full commander and "had their careers terminated prematurely."
"He brought real credit to the Navy," said Fidell. "It's too bad that it's unrequited love."
I wish this were atypical behavior on the part of the Bush administration. But it's not. And let's not forget, it's happening in the face of an unprecedented, likely unconstitutional impartation of dictatorial power to the president by the Congress, throwing habeus corpus out the window with the supposed maverick, John McCain, going along.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
