Taliban fighter says he's a POW and immune from U.S. courts

American forces in Afghanistan, Irek Hamidullin is arguing he should never have been prosecuted at all.



A federal court appeal from Hamidullin, a former Russian army officer who defected to fight alongside Taliban-affiliated forces, raises anew the question of how the U.S. government should handle people captured overseas for acts of violence they commit against the American military. At issue is whether Hamidullin should be regarded as an ordinary criminal or, as he contends, a lawful combatant entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war and immune from the U.S. court system.

The question is an exceedingly rare one for the courts, even in a post-Sept. 11 legal landscape in which judges have tackled cases concerning indefinite detention, treatment of foreign detainees and the constitutionality of military tribunals. There's been only one criminal prosecution in the last 15 years in which a court considered whether a Taliban fighter enjoyed combatant immunity. The judge in that case ruled for the government.

"I would be very surprised if he could get any traction on this legal argument at all," said Jens David Ohlin, a Cornell University international law professor. But "that isn't to say that it's a simple issue," he added.