Salim Ahmed Hamdan and other detainees at the Guantanamo "war on terror" prison camp were not immediately told of the Supreme Court's ruling that tribunals to be used for their cases were illegal, officials said.
Several hours after the landmark ruling in the case of the former Osama bin Laden driver, a senior administration official would only say that the US military was making arrangements for a defense lawyer to speak to Hamdan, a Yemeni who has been at Guantanamo since May 2002.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, could not say whether the other 450 detainees at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will be told.
"The commander's staff at Guantanamo is allowing Mr Hamdan's attorney to speak to Mr Hamdan today, or to somehow communicate with Mr Hamdan today, about the results in the case," the official said.
Hamdan's lawyers were not available to comment on whether they had spoken to him.
But they have said in the past that he was often mistrustful of the action that they were taking on his behalf and knew very little about the multiple appeals pursued in federal courts in the US.
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the war crimes tribunals formed to try Hamdan and other detainees were in breach of the Geneva Conventions and the US military code of justice.
But the government has insisted that there is no question of releasing detainees and preliminary comments have signalled the administration plans to seek legislation to introduce a new version of the tribunals.
Hamdan, 36, faced trial by a special military commission on a single charge of conspiracy to commit war crimes and terrorism. He was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after five years of allegedly close service to the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
He was transferred in 2002 to Guantanamo and was to have been the first detainee to face one of the US war crimes tribunals.
The indictment against Hamdan alleges that he met bin Laden in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1996 and "ultimately became a bodyguard and personal driver" for the al-Qaeda leader.
It alleges that Hamdan received training in the use of rifles, handguns and machine guns in an al-Qaeda camp and also "delivered weapons, ammunition or other supplies to al-Qaeda members and associates."
According to author Jonathan Mahler, who is writing a book about the Hamdan case, Hamdan, an orphan, was recruited for jihad, or holy war, in 1996, when he was a part-time taxi driver in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa.
Although not particularly religious, Hamdan travelled with 35 other Muslims to Tajikistan, where Islamic militants were battling the Russian-backed government.
The would-be militants reached Afghanistan but were turned back at the border with Tajikistan after a six-month journey through the mountains.
Hamdan and the others turned for help to bin Laden, who had recently taken up residence in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks Hamdan was captured by Afghan warlords and turned over to US forces.
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