Hamdan, a Yemeni, has said that he was a mechanic with a fourth-grade education when he left home for Afghanistan to find work. There he obtained a car and was employed as a driver for Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, from 1996 until U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
His lawyers maintain that he wanted to send money home to his family and that he never embraced Al Qaeda's violent ideology or conspired to harm others.
He was captured by Afghan military forces in November 2001, turned over to the U.S. military and taken to the Guantanamo Bay prison.
In July 2003, the Bush administration determined that there was "reason to believe" that Hamdan was a member of Al Qaeda or was "otherwise" involved in terrorism against the United States.
He was designated for trial before a military commission, and in December 2003 he was removed from the general prison population and placed in solitary confinement.
Many detainees have been characterized as merely foot soldiers for the Taliban army; more than 230 people have been released without being tried.
Hamdan was considered a major catch. On July 13, 2004, the man with six aliases was charged with "offenses triable by a military commission." The charges included terrorism, murder, attacking civilians and destroying property.
The government said Hamdan knew Bin Laden and his associates were behind the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa and on the U.S. destroyer Cole off the shore of Yemen, as well as the Sept. 11 plot.
At the same time, military prosecutors said, Hamdan delivered weapons and ammunition to Al Qaeda members and associates, transported weapons from Taliban warehouses to Al Qaeda, and was Bin Laden's driver in convoys in which bodyguards carried Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Prosecutors also said he received weapons training at the notorious Al Farouq camp in Afghanistan.
Hamdan's tribunal was in the pretrial stages when it was stopped in November after U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that tribunals were illegal and violated military law and the Geneva Convention.
It was Robertson's ruling that was reversed Friday by the three appellate judges -- Stephen F. Williams, A. Raymond Randolph and John G. Roberts.
In addition to finding that the Geneva Convention did not apply, the three also determined that the tribunals were properly set up by the White House, were authorized by Congress and should go forward.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that detainees should be given some kind of due process, but was vague about what type. If the justices agree to hear the Hamdan case, they will have the opportunity to spell out how prisoners in the war on terrorism should be tried.
Kristine Huskey, a Washington lawyer for 11 Kuwaitis imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, said she and other attorneys representing about 130 detainees would be watching the Hamdan case closely. The prisoners, she said, were weary of not having their day in court and increasingly suspicious that the tribunal process was stacked against them.
"It is not, by far, a procedure that anybody is happy with," she said.
