I'm not sure why many news reports didn't make the connection, but one of the two Guantanao Bay prisoners whose charges the US military dropped this week was Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the plaintiff in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The US military took Hamdan into custody in 2001, and finally got around to charging him with a crime in 2003.
The Supreme Court ruled on Hamdan in 2006, ordering the Department of Defense to start having real trials or release the prisoners. A year later, in 2007, the DoD has decided that it didn't have a case against the eponymous Hamdan.
UPDATE: I misstated in the original post that Hamdan was released. Wishful thinking. I should have said, "Charges dropped."
I don't think he was released. The military commisssion merely said they didn't have jurisdiction to try him at this time because he'd only been found by the tribunal to be an enemy combatant and they were only authorized to hear cases against illegal enemy combatants.
Posted by: Mojo | 06/06/2007 at 16:54