The US Navy lawyer successfully represented the plaintiff Guantanamo detainee in
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) and took his case to the US Supreme Court. Hamdan, a former driver for
Osama bin Laden, was captured during the
US invasion of Afghanistan, and held from 2002 at
Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He was charged in July 2004 with conspiracy to commit terrorism. As Hamdan's legal counsel, Swift was assisted in the defense by the Seattle law firm of
Perkins Coie and
Neal Katyal, a
Georgetown University Law Professor. They appealed Hamdan's
writ of habeas corpus petition to the US Supreme Court. In
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 126 S.Ct. 2749 (2006), the Court ruled that the military commission to try Hamdan was illegal and violated the
Geneva Conventions as well as the United States
Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). It held that Congress needed to authorize a process for detainee tribunals. The court ruled that the military commissions as established by the Dept. of Defense were flawed and illegal according to the US
Uniform Code of Military Justice and
Geneva Convention. As a result, the administration requested, and Congress passed, the
Military Commissions Act of 2006, to authorize a form of military tribunals to try the detainee cases. The president signed the law October 17, 2006. Beginning in 2007, Hamdan was charged under the new law and in 2008 tried by a military jury of the Military Commissions. It acquitted him of conspiracy for terrorism but convicted him of assisting efforts. It sentenced him to five and a half years, crediting him for the time he had already been detained. In November 2008, the US transferred Hamdan to Yemen, where he served the last month of his sentence. After release, he rejoined his family in Sana. In October 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the conviction. ==Forced retirement==