Now Shalif, who fled and ended up in the camp in a government-controlled area, referred to the parts of Yemen dominated by the Houthis as "enemy" — a classification that included his home town and even his own relatives who had joined the rebels.
But that decision left in place the Bush administration's concession that the men are not enemy combatants, the classification the government used to detain men at Guantánamo.
The government recently conceded that it would no longer try to prove that the Uighurs were enemy combatants, the classification it uses to detain people at Guantánamo, where 255 men are now held.
Both of these reports are listed under the classification Enemy Action, but from the details provided it's impossible to know who was ultimately responsible for the civilian deaths.
As for his own classification of enemy combatant, Mr. Shirbi was blunt: "It is my honor to have this classification in this world until the end, until eternity, God be my witness". In other cases, the incriminating evidence has generally been less clear-cut.
Eventually, the Supreme Court weighed in, upholding Yoo's position on their classification as enemy combatants, but allowing them lawyers who could challenge the grounds for and conditions of their detention.
We therefore hold that a citizen-detainee seeking to challenge his classification as an enemy combatant must receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decision maker.
Next month, the new National Assembly is expected to debate dropping North Korea's classification as an enemy from South Korea's National Security Law.
Global Rights, an international human rights legal group, maintains in its brief that "enemy combatant" is an "invented classification" that is not recognized in international law.
Dismissing Mr. Hamdi's petition for a writ of habeas corpus that sought to challenge his classification as an enemy combatant, the appeals court said that once the government explained itself, there was no further role for the federal courts.
When the proper court does consider his case, however, the Hamdi decision may well put Mr. Padilla in a stronger position to challenge his classification as an enemy combatant, given that he was taken into custody in Chicago rather than in Afghanistan.
