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Yaser hambi freedom days away { September 11 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/09/22/hamdi/http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/09/22/hamdi/
Enemy combatant's freedom days away
Required to give up U.S. citizenship
(CNN) -- The U.S.-born, Saudi detainee at the center of a landmark terrorism case, is being released within days, his attorney and the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Yaser Esam Hamdi has been in U.S. military custody since shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
He will be released "as soon as transportation to Saudi Arabia can be arranged," Virginia Federal Public Defender Frank Dunham said in a written statement.
"I am gratified at the prospect that Mr. Hamdi's return to Saudi Arabia and his family is now only days away," Dunham said.
Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Mark Corallo said in a written statement that Hamdi's transfer is "currently being arranged."
"The agreement requires Hamdi, once he arrives in Saudi Arabia, to renounce any claim he has to U.S. citizenship and to abide by strict travel restrictions," Corallo said.
Hamdi, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1980, will turn 24 on Sunday. He has lived most of his life in Saudi Arabia and has dual citizenship.
Dunham said he received a copy Wednesday of the release agreement signed by the Defense Department. It calls for Hamdi to leave by September 30.
Hamdi was the first detainee designated an "enemy combatant' by the Bush administration.
The Supreme Court this summer decided Hamdi had a right to challenge his ongoing detention at the U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the court's June 18 majority opinion that "an unchecked system of detention carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of others who do not present that sort of threat."
Since that decision, Dunham has been negotiating with the government for Hamdi's release.
The government has maintained that Hamdi was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and traveling with a military unit of the Taliban, the deposed regime that gave al Qaeda safe harbor in Afghanistan, when he was captured by U.S.-allied Northern Alliance forces in December 2001.
Hamdi was turned over to U.S. armed forces, and was transferred in January 2002 with hundreds of other battlefield captives to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Hamdi, who speaks some English, then made his claim of U.S. citizenship known to his captors.
As a result, he was moved in April 2002 to a U.S. Navy brig in Norfolk, Virginia, and then to the brig in Charleston in August, 2003.
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