Keith J. Allred is an American

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

and retired

Naval officer An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent context ...

.. He is best known for being the trial court judge for

Salim Ahmed Hamdan Salim Ahmed Hamdan () (born February 25, 1968) is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November ...

Early life and career

Keith Johns Allred was born on January 4, 1955, and died September 11, 2018. Judge Allred entered the Navy in 1979 after completing a Bachelor of Arts degree with High Honors at Brigham Young University. Initially assigned as a surface warfare officer, he served three years at sea aboard destroyers USS OLDERNDORF (DD-972)and USS TOWERS (DDG-9), qualifying as a Command Duty Officer, Officer of the Deck at Sea, and Navigator, with much of his initial assignment forward deployed to the US SEVENTH FLEET, operating from Yokosuka Japan and westward in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. In 1982 he was selected for the highly competitive Law Education Program, and accepted an offer to attend the University of Washington School of Law. He received his Juris Doctor in 1985 from the University of Washington. He served in the U.S. Navy in various capacities: in 1995 as general counsel, Naval Medical Center, San Diego, Calif.; in 1999 as circuit trial judge, Western Pacific Judicial Circuit, Yokosuka, Japan; and in 2005 as senior trial judge, Western Judicial Circuit, and military

Military career

Dismissed all charges against Salim Ahmed Hamdan

On June 4, 2007, Allred dismissed all charges against

. Hamdan had been one of the first four

Guantanamo captive The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

s to face charges before a military commission. It was Hamdan's

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

request,

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ''Hamdan v. Rumsfeld'', 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated both the Uniform Code of Mili ...

, that resulted in the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

ruling that the first version of the Guantanamo military commissions were unconstitutional. The

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

, which the Supreme Court had ruled did have the constitutional authority to institute military commissions passed the Military Commissions Act in the fall of 2006. Allred, and

Peter Brownback Peter E. Brownback III is a retired military officer and lawyer. He was appointed in 2004 by general John D. Altenburg as a Presiding Officer on the Guantanamo military commissions. The Washington Post reported: "...that Brownback and Altenburg h ...

, the officer presiding over

Omar Khadr Omar Ahmed Said Khadr ( ar, عمر أحمد سعيد خضر; born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian citizen who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U ...

's Tribunal, ruled that the since the Act only authorized the Commissions to try "

unlawful enemy combatant An unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war and therefore is claimed not to be protected by the Geneva Conventions. The Internati ...

s", and that Hamdan and Khadr's

Combatant Status Review Tribunal The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were esta ...

s had merely confirmed that the captives were "

enemy combatant Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...

s", the Commissions lacked jurisdiction.

References

Guantanamo Military Commission members Living people University of Washington School of Law alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Brigham Young University alumni 1955 births {{US-law-bio-stub

Early life and career

Military career

Dismissed all charges against Salim Ahmed Hamdan

See also

References