[Dialogue] Paper: Detainee Lawyer Must Leave Navy

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Monday, October 9, 2006 by the Associated Press
<http://www.ap.org> 

Paper: Detainee Lawyer Must Leave Navy 

 

 

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush
administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been
passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami
Herald reported Sunday. 

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the
military's "up or out" promotion system. Swift said last week he was
notified he would not be promoted to commander.

He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided
with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed
Hamdan, a Yemeni who was Osama bin Laden's driver.

"It was a pleasure to serve," Swift told the newspaper. He added he would
have defended Hamdan even if he had known it would cut short his Navy
career.

"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," Swift said.

The Pentagon had no comment Sunday.

A graduate of the University of Seattle School of Law, Swift plans to
continue defending Hamdan as a civilian.

The 36-year-old Hamdan was captured along the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan while fleeing the U.S. invasion that was a response to the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Hamdan has acknowledged that bin Laden paid him
$200 a month as his driver on a Kandahar farm, but he says he never joined
al-Qaida or engaged in military fighting.

Hamdan turned to civilian courts to challenge the constitutionality of his
war-crimes trial, a case that eventually led the Supreme Court to rule that
President Bush had outstripped his authority when he created ad hoc military
tribunals for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Swift's supervisor said he served with distinction.

"Charlie has obviously done an exceptional job, a really extraordinary job,"
said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, the Pentagon's chief defense counsel for
Military Commissions. He added it was "quite a coincidence" that Swift was
passed over for a promotion "within two weeks of the Supreme Court opinion."

Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National
Institute of Military Justice, said Swift was "a no-brainer for promotion."
Swift joins many other distinguished Navy officers over the years who have
seen their careers end prematurely, Fidell said.

"He brought real credit to the Navy," Fidell said. "It's too bad that it's
unrequited love."

Copyright C 2006 The Associated Press

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