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Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by members of the United States Armed Forces, he was transferred to the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. By an order of the President of the United States, Hamdan was designated to stand trial before a United States Military Commission for charges of conspiracy to commit multiple offenses, including attacking civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent and terrorism. Hamdan’s counsel applied for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that the military commissions were unlawful and trial before them would violate Hamdan’s rights of access to a court.

The District Court for the District of Columbia in a decision of 8 November 2004 found that Hamdan could not be tried by the military commission until such time as a competent tribunal has determined whether he is entitled to prisoner of war status. Only in the event that the outcome of such a determination is negative may Hamdan be tried by military commission, provided that the military commission amends its rules which currently preclude the presence of the accused at certain hearings of his own trial. Without such amendments, trial by military commission would be unlawful. The decision is the first in a line of case law before the United States courts and military commissions in the case of Hamdan. 

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, was Osama bin Laden’s driver. Captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by members of the United States Armed Forces, he was transferred to the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. By an order of the President of the United States, Hamdan was designated to stand trial before a United States Military Commission for charges of conspiracy to commit multiple offenses, including attacking civilians and civilian objects, murder by an unprivileged belligerent, destruction of property by an unprivileged belligerent and terrorism. Hamdan’s counsel applied for a writ of habeas corpus alleging that the military commissions were unlawful and trial before them would violate Hamdan’s rights of access to a court.

The present decision by the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia reversed an earlier decision of the District Court for the District of Columbia. The Court of Appeal found that the Geneva Convention was not judicially enforceable so Hamdan cannot rely on it before the federal courts. The Court continued that, even if it were, Hamdan was not entitled to its protection because the Convention did not apply to Al Qaeda members. Hamdan’s trial could proceed before a military commission. 

On 20 October 1965, Osman Bin Haji Mohamed Ali and Harun Bin Said, members of the Indonesian army, were found guilty for the murder of Susie Choo Kay Hoi, Juliet Goh Hwee Kuang and Yasin Bin Kesit. The deaths resulted from an explosion of the MacDonald House in Orchard Street, one of the main streets of Singapore. The accused were sentenced to death.

They appealed the decision by special leave to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The Judicial Committee dismissed the appeal. It held that the appellants were not entitled to the protection generally afforded to army members when captured by the opposing army (protection for prisoners of war). The protection was refused because the appellants had committed acts of sabotage and were dressed in civilian clothes (not in uniform) at the time they planted the explosives and detonated them, as well as when they were arrested.

During the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which persons of Tutsi ethnicity and moderate Hutus were systematically exterminated by apparatus of the Rwandan State and Hutu civilian militias including the Interahamwe, it is estimated that some 500,000 people were killed, thousands displaced to neighbouring countries and thousands more raped.

The present decision concerns the conviction for genocide and murder as a crime against humanity of Alexis Dusingize who directed a group of assassins during the conflict to murder the Tutsi that they came across. He operated from a roadblock, which he used to verify the identity cards of those that sought to pass with the aim of separating the Tutsi from the Hutu. He was convicted by the Court of First Instance at Nyamata and sentenced to death for his crimes.