Yaser Esam Hamdi

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"Hamdi" redirects here. See also Hamdi v. Rumsfeld

Yaser Esam Hamdi (b. September 26, 1980) was an American citizen captured in Afghanistan in 2001. It is claimed he was fighting U.S. forces with the Taliban. He was named by the U.S. administration as an "illegal enemy combatant", and detained for almost three years without receiving any charges.

He was initially detained at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was later transferred to jails in Virginia and South Carolina after it became known that he was a U.S. citizen.

Critics of his imprisonment claimed his civil rights were violated and that he was denied due process of law, including imprisonment without formal charges and denial of legal representation.

In June 2004, the United States Supreme Court rejected the U.S. government's attempts to detain Hamdi indefinitely without trial.

On September 23, 2004, the United States Justice Department agreed to release Hamdi to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he gives up his U.S. citizenship.

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[edit] Early years

According to his birth certificate (PDF), Hamdi was born to Saudi Arabian parents in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on September 26, 1980. As a child, he left the U.S. with his parents to live in Saudi Arabia.

[edit] Afghanistan

In late November 2001, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Hamdi was captured by Afghan Northern Alliance forces in Konduz, Afghanistan, along with hundreds of surrendering Taliban fighters who were then sent to the Qala-e-Jangi prison complex near Mazari Sharif.

Among the surrendering Taliban forces, some non-Afghan fighters, known as Afghan Arabs, instigated a prison riot among the 600 prisoners by detonating grenades they had concealed in their clothing, attacking Northern Alliance guards and seizing weapons. An American CIA operative interviewing prisoners, Mike Spann, was killed, becoming the first U.S. combat fatality during the invasion. The prison uprising was quashed after a three-day barrage of rockets and heavy gunfire from U.S. AC-130 gunships and Black Hawk helicopters. About 50 Northern Alliance soldiers and more than 500 Taliban prisoners were killed during the prison uprising. Two American prisoners, Hamdi and John Walker Lindh, were among the survivors.

Armed with the federal appeals court finding, the Bush administration refused Hamdi a lawyer until December 2003 at which time The Pentagon announced that Hamdi would be allowed access to 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 is the only other U.S. citizen known to be imprisoned by the U.S. government as an "illegal enemy combatant"). Frank Dunham, Hamdi’s lawyer, was allowed to meet with Hamdi for the first time in December 2003, more than two years after Hamdi was incarcerated. Under guidelines drafted by Pentagon lawyers, military observers attended and recorded the meetings between Dunham and Hamdi, and Dunham was not allowed to discuss with Hamdi the conditions of his confinement.

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. The case was eventually decided by United States Supreme Court.

In April 2004, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hamdi's case (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld), embracing the basic rights of U.S. citizens to due process protections, and rejecting the administration's claim that its war-making powers overrode constitutional liberties.

[edit] U.S. Supreme Court amici curiæ briefs

Twelve U.S. Supreme Court amici curiæ briefs were filed in the Hamdi case, including three in support of the U.S. government and nine on behalf of Hamdi. 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, Walter Jones, and Lamar Smith, and Allied Educational Foundation [1]; 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, Smith, Tom Tancredo, Roscoe Bartlett, Mac Collins, Joe Barton, and John Duncan, Jr.

Some supporters of the government's right to detain Hamdi indefinitely argued that he had renounced his citizenship by virtue of enlisting in a foreign army. The Center for American Unity brief argued that Hamdi was never actually a United States citizen, despite his birth in the U.S. Their brief argued that the policy of birthright citizenship is based on a flawed interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. [2]

The American Bar Association; American Civil Liberties Union, American Jewish Committee, Trial Lawyers For Public Justice, and Union For Reform Judaism filing jointly; the Cato Institute; 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 curiæ briefs to the court on behalf of Hamdi. [3].

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 U.S. is a signatory.

[edit] 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.

The U.S. Supreme Court opinion reasserted the rule of law in American society: "It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our nation's commitment to due process 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."

Justice O'Connor added, "We have 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."

[edit] Legal significance

The Hamdi case supported an unprecedented separation of powers between the executive branch and the judiciary. During the American Civil War, the Supreme Court prohibited military detention of noncombatant Americans without appeal or writ of habeas corpus, as long as the courts were functioning. A 1971 law condemned the detention of Japanese-Americans without legal recourse during World War II and 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, furthermore, the Bush administration 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.

Legal scholars hailed the Supreme Court decision as the most important civil rights opinion in a half-century and a dramatic reversal of the sweeping authority asserted by the White House after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

[edit] Release

On October 9, 2004, Hamdi was released and deported to Saudi Arabia after agreeing to renounce his U.S. citizenship and promising to comply by strict travel restrictions preventing him from travel to the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Hamdi was also required to notify Saudi Arabian officials if he ever plans to leave the kingdom and he had to promise not to sue the U.S. government over his captivity.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Hamdi, Yaser Esam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Taliban fighter
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Baton Rouge, Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH living
PLACE OF DEATH
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