Before It Was a Crime

From 1996 to 2001, a foreign national worked as the personal driver and bodyguard of the leader of a terrorist organisation, and prosecutors said he also transported personnel, supplies and weapons between the group's sites and helped evacuate the leader after overseas embassy bombings. He was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 while driving toward Kandahar in a vehicle carrying anti-aircraft missiles. Years later he was tried before a U.S. military commission for providing material support for terrorism, an offence spelled out in a 2006 statute. The defence argued that material support for terrorism was not recognised as a war crime under international law when he acted, so it could not lawfully be prosecuted before a military commission for conduct that took place before 2006.