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Pentagon allows lawyer for yaser enemy combatant { December 2 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3927352http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3927352
Pentagon Allows Lawyer for U.S.-Born Taliban Suspect
Tue December 2, 2003 08:00 PM ET
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday it will allow a U.S.-born man captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at a Navy jail to have access to a lawyer, after denying him counsel for two years.
Yaser Esam Hamdi, 22, who is being held in Charleston, South Carolina, and has not been charged, will be given access to a lawyer "as a matter of discretion and military policy" because interrogators have finished collecting intelligence from him, the Defense Department said in a one-page statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to hear an appeal from the public defender who challenged Hamdi's detention and wanted to act as his lawyer. But it was not immediately known if the attorney, Frank Dunham, would be allowed to visit Hamdi.
Hamdi was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents and raised in Saudi Arabia. He is designated by the Pentagon as an "enemy combatant," which defense officials have said strips a person of the right to counsel and allows indefinite detention without charges.
The United States has been attacked by civil rights and legal groups for holding without charges hundreds of prisoners in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.
The Defense Department statement said legal access for Hamdi was not required by domestic or international law and "should not be treated as precedent."
CAPTURED WITH TALIBAN FIGHTERS
Hamdi was with Taliban fighters when he was captured by U.S. forces in late 2001. He acknowledged loyalty to the Taliban, according to papers filed by the government.
Hamdi was moved to the naval brig in Charleston in August.
The Defense Department announcement said that access to a lawyer would be completed over the next few days and made "subject to appropriate security restrictions."
Unlike some 660 other suspects in the war on terrorism held at the U.S. Navy Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Hamdi as a U.S. citizen is not eligible for possible trial by a military commission.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that its policy was to permit access to counsel by an enemy combatant who is a U.S. citizen detained by the military in the United States after the Pentagon has determined that such access will not compromise national security once intelligence collection is completed.
Hamdi, who also holds a Saudi citizenship, was among the Taliban and al Qaeda detainees being held at Guantanamo when officials discovered that he had been born in Louisiana.
A copy of his birth certificate showed he was born on Sept. 26, 1980, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his parents once worked. He went to Saudi Arabia with his parents as a child.
Dunham last year filed court papers arguing Hamdi was being held illegally and was being denied access to legal representation.
But federal prosecutors at the time strongly opposed that contention and asked for a stay of a judge's order granting the public defender's office immediate and unmonitored access to Hamdi within five days.
They argued that the court lacked the authority to order the access and improperly allowed the public defender to proceed on Hamdi's behalf, when he had no relationship with him. The public defender was brought in by Hamdi's father.
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