Detainee stunned by court victory

GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Osama bin Laden's stunned former driver praised Allah three times in Arabic on learning of his U.S. Supreme Court victory that shut down President Bush's war court, his U.S. military attorney said Friday.

Moreover, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift said Salim Ahmed Hamdan's defense team would arrive at Guantánamo in southeast Cuba on Tuesday to brief the Yemeni with a fourth-grade education on the plan to seek "a fair trial" for him.

Swift said Hamdan, 36, sounded stunned as he got the first word about the ruling Thursday in a 20-minute phone call between Washington and Camp Delta, the Pentagon's prison-camp complex at Guantánamo.

Alhumdullah, Alhumdullah, Alhumdullah, he told his lawyers — Arabic for "Praise be to God."

Four people were on the line — Hamdan, Swift, a Pentagon-approved defense Arabic translator and Georgetown Law School professor Neal Katyal, Swift's civilian counsel who argued the case at the high court.

"It was moving. There was no whooping and hollering," Swift said Friday.

Swift said he could ethically describe the telephone conversation in detail because U.S. military-intelligence agents monitored the conversation, meaning attorney-client privilege was breached.

"I could hear in his voice that he was ultimately stunned. He was as caught by surprise by the decision as anyone," said Swift, a 19-year career Navy officer, recalling earlier conversations in which Hamdan's legal team laid out his Supreme Court challenge.

Swift said Hamdan had long found it inconceivable that he could win.

"He would say, 'He's the president of the United States and it's the Supreme Court.' "

In the 5-3 ruling, the high court found that President Bush exceeded his powers with the administration's formula for military commissions, which opened in August 2004 and before which 10 Guantánamo captives were charged as al-Qaida conspirators.

The first detainee in the dock was Hamdan, who has been held at Guantánamo for four-plus years and admits to working for bin Laden as a driver on his farm in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

But Hamdan argues he did it as a job, earning $200 a month. He claims he never hurt anyone and never conspired with al-Qaida to attack U.S. targets.

Swift said there was no air of celebration in the conversation.

Rather, he said, there was an air of "gratitude" that the "Supreme Court said whether it was a military or a civilian trial, he'd get a fair trial, that he'd have the right to be at the trial, he'd see the evidence, and he'd have all the protections."