U.S. agrees to send detainee to Saudi Arabia

9/23/2004 4:30:00 PM GMT

U.S. authorities will send Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant for more than two years, to Saudi Arabia without facing charges in the United States.

The Justice Department has reached a deal with Yaser Esam Hamdi, who won a Supreme Court decision granting him a legal hearing, to return to Saudi Arabia. The deal also means that despite his long detention, Yaser Esam Hamdi will not face any criminal charges in the United States.

Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge, La., and raised in Saudi Arabia. He will travel to Saudi Arabia by the Defense Department as soon as transportation can be arranged.

He was being held in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. and he holds citizenship in Saudi Arabia.

Under the agreement, Hamdi, 23, will renounce claims to U.S. citizenship and agree not to travel to certain places where he could be able to fight against the United States or its allies, a department spokesman said.

Reuters identified those places as Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.

"I am gratified that Mr. Hamdi's return to Saudi Arabia and his family is now only days away," said Hamdi's lawyer, federal public defender Frank Dunham.

Hamdi was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001, and was allegedly accused of fighting for the Taliban. He was considered as an enemy combatant and was detained for three months at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay before being transferred to a Navy brig in the United States when officials discovered that he was a U.S. citizen.

Because he was born in America, Hamdi was granted a claim to U.S. citizenship and exempted from being tried before a military commission.

Hamdi has challenged his detention, and in June, the Supreme Court ruled that his detention was illegal and that he be given access to a legal hearing to challenge it.

Justice permitted Dunham, Hamdi’s lawyer, to visit him but had not convened a legal proceeding.

The Justice Department has downplayed Hamdi's release, relating him to 135 other suspects who have been released from Guantanamo Bay.

The Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said; "The U.S. has no interest in detaining enemy combatants beyond the point that they pose a threat."