More Information On Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift

A few days ago, I posted some material with regard to Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of BushCo's military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees. Swift was passed over for promotion and now has to leave the military.

Here are excerpts from an article which appeared in last June's New York Times:

A military defense lawyer told a Senate hearing on Wednesday that when military authorities first asked him to represent a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was instructed that he could negotiate only a guilty plea.

The lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles D. Swift of the Navy, who represents a Yemeni, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, said that he regarded the effort, in December 2003, "as a clear attempt to coerce to Mr. Hamdan into pleading guilty."

Commander Swift testified that when he visited Mr. Hamdan, he discovered that the prisoner did not want to plead guilty, as the authorities had apparently believed from their earlier interrogation of him, conducted without a lawyer.

So, instead of negotiating a guilty plea, Commander Swift began a spirited defense, according to his testimony. He filed motions to ensure that he be entitled to represent Mr. Hamdan and demanded that his client be given a health examination. * * *

At Wednesday's hearing, Lt. Gen. Thomas Hemingway of the Air Force, the legal adviser to the military authority that runs the commissions, told the committee there was never any threat of coercion in Mr. Hamdan's case.

The authorities eventually charged Mr. Hamdan with crimes involving terrorism, asserting that he was a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. A federal judge halted his trial, saying the military commissions were unconstitutional. The government has appealed.

Commander Swift read a letter in which the chief prosecutor, Col. Fred Borch of the Army, wrote that he would ensure that a defense lawyer be given access to Mr. Hamdan and that "such access shall continue so long as we are engaged in pretrial negotiations."

Commander Swift said, "I was deeply troubled that to ensure that Mr. Hamdan would plead guilty as planned, the chief prosecutor's request came with a critical condition that the defense counsel was for the limited purpose of 'negotiating a guilty plea' to an unspecified offense and that Mr. Hamdan's access to counsel was conditioned on his willingness to negotiate such a plea."

General Hemingway testified that Commander Swift was mistaken and that, "in the first place, the chief defense counsel is the individual who appointed Lt. Cmdr. Swift to defend Mr. Hamdan, not the prosecutor."

This article from The Telegraph also contains some good background.