Yaser Esam Hamdi

Yaser Esam Hamdi (born September 26, 1980) is a former American citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001.

The United States government claims that he was fighting with the Taliban 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.

According to his birth certificate, Hamdi was born to immigrant parents from Saudi Arabia in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 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 reported that Hamdi ran away from home during the summer of 2001, when he was 20 years old, and trained at a Taliban 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.

In late November 2001, after the United States invasion of Afghanistan, Hamdi was captured by Afghan Northern Alliance forces in Kunduz, Afghanistan, along with hundreds of surrendering Taliban fighters.

All the men were sent to the Qala-e-Jangi prison complex near Mazar-i-Sharif.

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) was quashed after a three-day battle, which included heavy air support from U.S. AC-130 gunships 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, 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, Louisiana, you know it, yeah?"

The United States transported Hamdi to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and detained him there starting February 11, 2002.

On April 5, the government transferred Hamdi to a jail at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

On August 1, 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice issued a memo signed by Jay S. Bybee to John A. Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency regarding authorized interrogation and detention techniques for the detainees in the war on terror.

Armed with a federal appeals court finding, the Bush administration refused Hamdi a lawyer until December 2003.

The Pentagon 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").

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 and South Carolina.

He continued to be detained without trial or legal representation.

Critics of his imprisonment claimed his civil rights were violated and that he was denied due process of law under the U.S. Constitution.

They said his imprisonment without formal charges and denial of right to counsel was illegal.

On June 28, 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the United States Supreme Court 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: to confront his accusers and contest the grounds of detention in an impartial forum.

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 agreed to hear Hamdi's case (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld).

It ruled that U.S. citizens were entitled to the basic rights of due process protections, and rejected the administration's claim that its war-making powers overrode constitutional liberties.