Yaser Esam Hamdi
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Yaser Esam Hamdi (; born September 26, 1980) is a former American citizen who was captured in
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
in 2001. The United States government claims that he was fighting with the
Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...
against U.S. and Afghan Northern Alliance forces. He was declared an " illegal enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and detained for almost three years without charge. On October 9, 2004, on the condition that he renounce his U.S. citizenship and commit to travel prohibitions and other conditions, the government released him and deported him to Saudi Arabia, where he had been raised. Hamdi was initially detained at Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, along with eventually hundreds of other detainees. After officials learned that he was a U.S. citizen, Hamdi was transferred to military jails in
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
and
South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...
. He continued to be detained without trial or legal representation. Critics of his imprisonment claimed his
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
were violated and that he was denied
due process of law Due process of law is application by the state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to a case so all legal rights that are owed to a person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual pers ...
under the U.S. Constitution. They said his imprisonment without formal charges and denial of
right to counsel In criminal law, the right to counsel means a defendant has a legal right to have the assistance of counsel (i.e., lawyers) and, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal ex ...
was illegal. On June 28, 2004, in '' Hamdi v. Rumsfeld'', the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
upheld the U.S. government's ability to detain him indefinitely as an enemy combatant, but granted him some due process rights and the ability to contest his enemy combatant status. It said he had the right as a U.S. citizen to due process under ''
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...
'': to confront his accusers and contest the grounds of detention in an impartial forum.


Early years

According to his
birth certificate A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the Childbirth, birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation ...
, Hamdi was born to immigrant parents from
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...
in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...
, on September 26, 1980. As a child, he moved with his parents from the United States back to Saudi Arabia, where he grew up. The ''
Charleston Post and Courier ''The Post and Courier'' is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the ''Charleston Courier'', founded in 1803, the ''Charleston Daily News'', founded 1865, and ''The Evening Post'', f ...
'' reported that Hamdi ran away from home during the summer of 2001, when he was 20 years old, and trained at a
Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...
camp. His family said that he spent only a few weeks at the camp, "where he quickly became disillusioned". He was caught up in the fighting and chaos after the United States invaded Afghanistan.


Afghanistan

In late November 2001, after the
United States invasion of Afghanistan Shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States declared the war on terror and subsequently led a multinational military operation against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The stated goal was to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had exe ...
, Hamdi was captured by Afghan
Northern Alliance The Northern Alliance ( ''Da Šumāl E'tilāf'' or ''Ettehād Šumāl''), officially known as the United National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( ''Jabha-ye Muttahid-e barāye Afğānistān''), was a military alliance of groups that op ...
forces in
Kunduz Kunduz (; ; ) is a city in northern Afghanistan and the capital of Kunduz Province. The city has an estimated population of about 268,893 as of 2015, making it about the List of cities in Afghanistan, seventh largest city of Afghanistan, and the ...
, Afghanistan, along with hundreds of surrendering
Taliban , leader1_title = Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Supreme leaders , leader1_name = {{indented plainlist, * Mullah Omar{{Natural Causes{{nbsp(1994–2013) * Akhtar Mansour{{Assassinated (2015–2016) * Hibatullah Akhundzada (2016–present) ...
fighters. All the men were sent to the Qala-e-Jangi prison complex near
Mazar-i-Sharif Mazar-i-Sharīf ( ; Dari and ), also known as Mazar-e Sharīf or simply Mazar, is the fifth-largest city in Afghanistan by population, with the estimates varying from 500,000-680,000. It is the capital of Balkh province and is linked by highway ...
. Among the surrendering Taliban forces, Afghan Arabs instigated a prison riot by detonating grenades they had concealed in their clothing, attacking Northern Alliance guards and seizing weapons. The prison uprising (known as the
Battle of Qala-i-Jangi The Battle of Qala-i-Jangi in Afghanistan (sometimes also referred to as the "Battle of Mazar-i-Sharif") was a six-day military engagement following an uprising of prisoners of war who had been taken into custody by U.S.-led coalition forces on ...
) was quashed after a six-day battle, which included heavy air support from U.S.
AC-130 gunship The Lockheed AC-130 gunship is a heavily armed, long-endurance, ground-attack variant of the C-130 Hercules transport, fixed-wing aircraft. It carries a wide array of ground-attack weapons that are integrated with sensors, navigation, and fir ...
s and Black Hawk helicopters. One American ( Johnny Micheal Spann) was killed and nine were injured, along with about 50 Northern Alliance soldiers. Between 200 and 400 Taliban prisoners were killed during the prison uprising. Two prisoners who were American citizens, Hamdi and
John Walker Lindh John Philip Walker Lindh (born February 9, 1981) is an American Taliban member who was captured by United States forces as an enemy combatant during the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. He was detained at Qala-i-Jangi ...
, were among the survivors. Hamdi surrendered on the second day of fighting with a group of 73 surviving prisoners, after Coalition forces began flooding the underground basements where the remaining prisoners had hidden themselves. The United States officer Matthew Campbell approached him, demanding to know his origin, to which Hamdi replied "I was born in America...
Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...
, Louisiana, you know it, yeah?" Worthington, Andy, ''The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison,''
Pluto Press Pluto Press is a British independent book publisher based in London, founded in 1969. Pluto Press states that it publishes "radical, left‐wing non­‐fiction books", and is anti-capitalist and internationalist. It belongs to The Internat ...
. , 2007
The United States transported Hamdi to the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, also known as GTMO ( ), GITMO ( ), or simply Guantanamo Bay, is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in 2002 by p ...
and detained him there starting February 11, 2002. On April 5, the government transferred Hamdi to a jail at
Naval Station Norfolk Naval Station Norfolk is a United States Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia, that is the headquarters and home port of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Forces Command. The installation occupies about of waterfront space and of pier and wharf space of the Ham ...
in Virginia. Armed with a federal appeals court finding, the Bush administration refused Hamdi a lawyer until December 2003.
The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...
announced then that Hamdi would be allowed access to legal counsel because his "intelligence value" had been exhausted and that giving him a lawyer would not harm national security. The announcement said the decision "should not be treated as a precedent" for other cases in which the government had designated U.S. citizens as "illegal enemy combatants". ( José Padilla was then the only other U.S. citizen known to be imprisoned by the U.S. government as an "illegal enemy combatant"). After the decision, Frank Dunham, Hamdi's lawyer, was finally able to meet with him in February 2004, more than two years after he was incarcerated. Under Pentagon guidelines, military observers attended and recorded their meetings. Dunham was not allowed to discuss with Hamdi the conditions of his confinement. By this time, he had been transferred to the Navy Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. After the initial meeting, Hamdi was allowed to have confidential discussions with his attorneys without military observers, or video or audio taping in the room. Hamdi's father petitioned a federal court for Hamdi's rights to know the crime(s) he is accused of, and to receive a fair trial before imprisonment. In January 2004, the
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
agreed to hear Hamdi's case ('' Hamdi v. Rumsfeld''). It ruled that U.S. citizens were entitled to the basic rights of
due process Due process of law is application by the state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to a case so all legal rights that are owed to a person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual p ...
protections, and rejected the administration's claim that its war-making powers overrode
constitutional A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...
liberties.


2002 memos

On August 1, 2002, the
Office of Legal Counsel The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is an office in the United States Department of Justice that supports the attorney general in their role as legal adviser to the president and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the atto ...
of the Department of Justice issued a memo signed by Jay S. Bybee to John A. Rizzo, Acting
General Counsel A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department. In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their ...
of the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
regarding authorized interrogation and detention techniques for the detainees in the war on terror. It approved ten " enhanced interrogation" techniques including
waterboarding Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboard ...
. Shortly after September 26, 2002, numerous senior government political appointees of the Bush administration flew to see the conditions of detention for Mohammed al-Kahtani and two United States citizens then held as enemy combatants: Jose Padilla and Hamdi, as a result of legal challenges to the government's detention policy. The officials included the following: * David Addington, legal counsel to Vice-president
Dick Cheney Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American former politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He has been called vice presidency o ...
; * Alberto Gonzales,
White House Counsel The White House Counsel is a senior staff appointee of the president of the United States whose role is to advise the president on all legal issues concerning the president and their administration. The White House counsel also oversees the Off ...
and later U.S. Attorney General; * John A. Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
; * William Haynes II,
General Counsel of the Department of Defense The general counsel of the Department of Defense is the general counsel, chief legal officer of the United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense (DoD), advising both the United States Secretary of Defense, secretary and United State ...
; * Jack Goldsmith, legal adviser to Haynes in the Office of General Counsel, DOD; * Alice S. Fisher, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division, Department of Justice (DOJ), with responsibility for counter-terrorism efforts; and * Patrick F. Philbin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ, who had helped develop policy related to Bush's use of military commissions to review detainees' cases; They first flew to
Camp Delta Camp Delta is a permanent American Guantanamo Bay detention camp, detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay that replaced the temporary facilities of Camp X-Ray. Its first facilities were built between 27 February and mid-April 2002 by Seabee (US Navy), ...
at Guantanamo to see the detainee al-Kahtani. They traveled next to Charleston, South Carolina, to view Padilla, held at the Naval Brig, and finally to
Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...
,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
, to view Hamdi, who was still being detained at that Naval brig. Mayer, Jane, '' The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals'', 2008. p. 199 Upon seeing Hamdi curled up in
fetal position Fetal position (British English: also foetal) is the positioning of the body of a prenatal fetus as it develops. In this position, the back is curved, the head is bowed, and the limbs are bent and drawn up to the torso. A compact position is ...
in his cell, Goldsmith wrote, "it seemed unnecessary to hold a twenty-two year old foot soldier in a remote wing of a run-down prison in a tiny cell, isolated from almost all human contact, and with no access to a lawyer". In 2008, 91 pages of memos drafted in 2002 by officers at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Charleston, were made public under an FOIA petition. As reported by news outlets, the emails and memos described the officers' concerns for the sanity of the detainees due to the conditions of their confinements at the time, which included extended solitary confinement. The memos indicate that officers were concerned at the time that the isolation and lack of stimuli was severely affecting the mental health of Hamdi, Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, another U.S. detainee.


U.S. Supreme Court ''amici curiae'' briefs

Twelve U.S. Supreme Court ''
amici curiae An amicus curiae (; ) is an individual or organization that is not a party to a legal case, but that is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. Whether an ''amicu ...
'' briefs were filed in the ''Hamdi'' case, including nine on behalf of Hamdi and three in support of the government. Supporters of the U.S. government's position included the American Center for Law and Justice; Citizens for the Common Defence; filing jointly, the Washington Legal Foundation, U.S. Representatives
Joe Barton Joseph Linus Barton (born September 15, 1949) is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he represented in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 t ...
(R–Tex.), Walter Jones (R–N.C.), and Lamar Smith (R–Tex.), and Allied Educational Foundatio

and, also filing jointly, the Center for American Unity, Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, National Center on Citizenship and Immigration, and U.S. Representatives
Dana Rohrabacher Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher ( ; born June 21, 1947) is an American former politician who served in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2019. Representing for the last three terms of his House tenure ...
(R–Calif.), Lamar Smith,
Tom Tancredo Thomas Gerard Tancredo (; born December 20, 1945) is an American politician from Colorado, who represented Colorado's 6th congressional district, the state's sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to ...
(R–Colo.), Roscoe Bartlett (R–Md.), Mac Collins (R–Ga.),
Joe Barton Joseph Linus Barton (born September 15, 1949) is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he represented in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1985 t ...
, and Jimmy Duncan (R–Tenn.). Some government supporters argued that he had renounced his citizenship by virtue of enlisting in a foreign army. The Center for American Unity's brief argued that Hamdi was never a United States citizen, despite his birth in the United States. They argued that the policy of birthright citizenship is based on a flawed interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. On the other side, the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...
;
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...
,
American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a civil rights group and Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the wi ...
, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and Union for Reform Judaism filing jointly; the
Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch ...
; Experts on the Law of War; Certain Former Prisoners of War; Global Rights; Hon. Nathaniel R. Jones, Hon. Abner J. Mikva, Hon. William A. Norris, Hon. H. Lee Sarokin, Hon. Herbert J. Stern, Hon. Harold R. Tyler, Jr., Scott Greathead, Robert M. Pennoyer, and Barbara Paul Robinson filing jointly; International Humanitarian Organizations and Associations of International Journalists filing jointly; and a group of international law professors filing jointly submitted ''amici curiae'' briefs to the court on behalf of Hamdi. Opponents of the U.S. government's detention without trial of U.S. citizens argued that the practice violated numerous constitutional safeguards and protections, as well as international conventions to which the United States is a signatory.


U.S. Supreme Court decision

On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court issued a decision repudiating the U.S. government's unilateral assertion of executive authority to suspend constitutional protections of individual liberty. "An interrogation by one's captor, however effective an intelligence-gathering tool, hardly constitutes a constitutionally adequate fact-finding before a neutral decision-maker", wrote Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O' ...
. The U.S. Supreme Court opinion reasserted the
rule of law The essence of the rule of law is that all people and institutions within a Body politic, political body are subject to the same laws. This concept is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". Acco ...
in American society: "It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our nation's commitment to
due process Due process of law is application by the state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to a case so all legal rights that are owed to a person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual p ...
is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad." She added that the Court had "long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens". The Supreme Court decision in ''Hamdi'' did not say that the government could not detain enemy combatants; it can detain enemy combatants for the length of hostilities. However, they must be given some sort of due process to determine their status as an enemy combatant. Although the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
has recognized the
Combatant Status Review Tribunal The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as " enemy combatants". The CSRTs were establi ...
, the Pentagon's administrative procedure, the Supreme Court did not recognize it as due process.


Legal significance

The Hamdi decision reaffirmed the importance of
separation of powers The separation of powers principle functionally differentiates several types of state (polity), state power (usually Legislature#Legislation, law-making, adjudication, and Executive (government)#Function, execution) and requires these operat ...
among the branches of the government, and, in particular, the role of the
judiciary The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...
in reviewing actions of the
executive branch The executive branch is the part of government which executes or enforces the law. Function The scope of executive power varies greatly depending on the political context in which it emerges, and it can change over time in a given country. In ...
infringing the rights of citizens even in emergencies. After the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, the Supreme Court prohibited military detention of noncombatant Americans without appeal or writ of
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...
as long as courts were functioning; the difference with this case being that the Supreme Court waited until the war was over to decide the case. A 1948 federal law condemned the detention of Japanese-Americans without
legal recourse A legal recourse is an action that can be taken by an individual or a corporation to attempt to remedy a legal difficulty. * A lawsuit if the issue is a matter of Civil law (common law), civil law * Contracts that require mediation or arbitration ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
; it prohibited the imprisonment of American citizens except pursuant to an act of Congress. The Bush administration claimed that U.S. law does not apply to "illegal enemy combatants" and that it asserted the right to decide which U.S. citizens are "enemy combatants", ineligible for protection of their rights as enshrined in the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
. Some legal scholars hailed the Supreme Court decision as the most important
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
opinion in a half-century. They said that it was a dramatic reversal of the sweeping authority asserted by President Bush since the
September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
. Other scholars, however, believe the Supreme Court imprudently enhanced the Executive's power. The Supreme Court allowed the Executive to unilaterally determine that Hamdi was an enemy combatant. Further, the Supreme Court determined that the Executive was not required to provide any process when making the enemy combatant classification. The Supreme Court's only requirement was that a person classified as an enemy combatant must be provided with minimal due process. In effect, this allowed the Executive branch to lower the due process requirements on an American citizen, solely because the Executive branch claimed he was an enemy combatant. Assessing the Hamdi decision, Habeas Corpus scholar Jared Perkins noted "By ratifying in part and 'fixing' (as Justice Scalia put it) in part the executive's action against Hamdi, the plurality participated with the executive in the usurpation of Congress's power to define the curtailment of the public's liberties. Removing this power (and, more importantly, this responsibility) from the representatives of the people seriously undermines those structural protections that Madison and others saw as the fundamental barrier to tyranny."


Release

After agreeing to renounce his U.S. citizenship, Hamdi was released on October 9, 2004, without being charged and was deported to Saudi Arabia. He had to promise to comply with strict travel restrictions, which prohibited him from traveling to the United States,
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
, the
West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
and
Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
,
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
,
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
,
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, and
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
. Hamdi was required to notify Saudi Arabian officials if he ever plans to leave the kingdom. (Saudi Arabia uses exit visas and presumably this is how American authorities can track him if he leaves the country.) He had to promise not to sue the U.S. government over his captivity. Saudi Arabia subsequently imprisoned Hamdi in
Dammam Dammam (Arabic: الدمام ad-Dammām) is a city and governorate, and the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Located on the coast of the Persian Gulf, it had a population of 1,386,166 as of 2022, making it the country's fifth- ...
for eight years and Ha'ir for seven years; he is due to be released in 2022. At Ha'ir he became a media specialist with the prisoner-run enterprise. Although Hamdi renounced his U.S. citizenship, it is unclear whether the renunciation counts as "voluntary", as required by the Supreme Court's decisions in '' Afroyim v. Rusk'' and '' Vance v. Terrazas.''


See also

*
John Walker Lindh John Philip Walker Lindh (born February 9, 1981) is an American Taliban member who was captured by United States forces as an enemy combatant during the United States' invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. He was detained at Qala-i-Jangi ...
* José Padilla


References


External links


Kuwaiti Family Committee
is a site with details about the Kuwaiti detainees.

(Findlaw)
''Hamdi v. Rumsfeld''U.S. Supreme Court Brief Resource Center, U.S. Supreme Court ''Amici Curiae'' Briefs
(Jenner and Block Law Firm)

Cornell Law School * ttp://www.jenner.com/files/tbl_s69NewsDocumentOrder/FileUpload500/379/03-6696_decision_hamdi.pdf US Supreme Court decision, Hamdi et al. v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et al.(PDF) (Jenner and Block law firm)
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
, Duke Law School

U.S. Department of State {{DEFAULTSORT:Hamdi, Yaser Esam 1980 births Living people American Islamists American people of Saudi Arabian descent American Taliban Guantanamo detainees known to have been released People deported from the United States People from Baton Rouge, Louisiana Former United States citizens American extrajudicial prisoners of the United States