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The U.S. government has decided to release an American citizen classified as an enemy combatant in the war on terror and allow him to return to Saudi Arabia without facing charges. Yaser Hamdi was picked up nearly three years ago while fighting with the Taleban against American forces. Yaser Hamdi, 21, was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. But several months into his detention as an enemy combatant, U.S. authorities learned he was not a Saudi citizen, but was actually born in the United States and was therefore an American. He was then taken out of a cell at the...

U.S. Agrees to Release Terror Suspect By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The Justice Department (news - web sites) has agreed to release a U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant for more than two years, clearing the way for him to return to Saudi Arabia, officials said Wednesday. Under terms of the agreement, Yaser Esam Hamdi must renounce his American citizenship but will not face any criminal charges. Hamdi, born in Baton Rouge, La., and raised in Saudi Arabia, will be flown by the Defense Department to Saudi Arabia as soon as transportation can be arranged. He...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A lawyer for an American-born terror suspect said Thursday that a deal had been tentatively reached with the U.S. government that will send the man to Saudi Arabia and spare him prosecution after being held more than two years without charge. Yaser Esam Hamdi, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, could become the first American classified as an enemy combatant to renounce his citizenship to avoid prosecution. "There is an agreement in principle for his release and it's now in the hands of the government," Hamdi's lawyer, Frank Dunham Jr., told The Associated Press....

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- Lawyers for the government and for a U.S. citizen captured on the Afghanistan battlefield informed a federal judge Wednesday they are negotiating the man's release from federal custody.In court papers filed jointly, the lawyers said they have been discussing terms of the release since the Supreme Court ruled on June 28 that the Bush administration could not indefinitely detain Yaser Esam Hamdi as an enemy combatant with no legal rights.

The three "war-on-terrorism cases" decided by the Supreme Court at the close of its term in June have been portrayed — especially overseas — as significant defeats for the Bush administration. This is largely because the court ruled, over the administration's strong objections, that the men, now held as al Qaeda and Taliban members at the Guantanamo Bay naval station in Cuba, may challenge their detention through the federal courts. But in fact, when all these cases are read together — the Guantanamo Bay case, along with the court's decisions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla (both involving...

The reportage of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld is disconcerting to say the least. Both journalists and advocacy experts are interpreting the opinion as a function of their ideology. Ironically, in this instance antithetical ideologies lend to similar interpretations. Journalists and jurists, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, civil libertarians and law enforcement personnel, all interpreted this opinion to mean that those incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, and the petitioner, Hamdi, will now have access to United States courts. This is an excerpt from the AP report of this case after the ruling was announced: “The...

The same slippery slope one assigns to the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush an outrageous ruling explained well by Andy McCarthy and others is no less likely in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The fundamental issue here is judicial review in the context of war, and the proper extent of that judicial review. I'm not much impressed with the alignment of the justices in some of the arguments I've been hearing. Conservatives, including originalists like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, can't be expected to agree all the time. And they don't. So, the mere fact that they disagree in Hamdi is...

Baghdad, Iraq — Meet Umar Baziyani. He is believed to be the mastermind behind Ansar al Islam, a terrorist organization in Iraq that provided safe haven and coordinated training for Abu Musab al Zarkawi and his al Qaeda operatives near the Iraq-Iran border. In his role in these respective terrorist organizations, Baziyani conspired to kill scores of Iraqis and numerous Americans, and joined in a scheme to destabilize an entire nation. Earlier this month, Baziyani was captured, and he is currently being detained in Iraq. In a recent conversation, a senior Coalition military official revealed that while in detention,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration must regroup legally and politically after the Supreme Court dealt a major setback to the government's anti-terrorism tactics since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The high court refused to endorse the White House claim of authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny access to courts or lawyers while interrogating them. Monday's rulings in a trio of cases dealing with the rights of prisoners mean that detainees, whether potential terrorist threats or victims of circumstance, have greater rights to challenge their captivity in U.S. courts and force the government to explain itself.

... The Court's three rulings will surely complicate U.S. detention policy, at least at the margins. But at the same time they uphold the longstanding and proper deference that the Supreme Court has shown throughout its history to the executive branch on national security, especially in wartime. That includes decisions on how to define and handle a dangerous enemy. For a change, this particular Court actually restrained itself. Most important, the Court upheld the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to detain enemy combatants, including U.S. citizens. That's the key finding of Hamdi, and the implicit basis of Padilla, which the Court...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday that Congress gave President Bush (news - web sites) the power to hold an American citizen without charges or trial, but said the detainee can challenge his treatment in court.   The ruling sided with the administration on an important legal point raised in the war on terrorism. At the same time, it left unanswered other hard questions raised by the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been detained more than two years and who was only recently allowed to see a lawyer. The administration had fought any suggestion that Hamdi...

Experts say justices may be less inclined to favor administration WASHINGTON - The Abu Ghraib prison abuse furor may have a significant impact on one highly select audience with power over the president’s anti-terrorism effort: the nine justices of the Supreme Court. The court is now deliberating in the cases of al-Qaida suspects held at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and two American citizens, Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, held in the United States as enemy combatants. Decisions are expected in those historic cases before the court ends its term in June. At issue: whether Padilla, Hamdi, and the...

On Wednesday, two cases were argued before the Supreme Court: Padilla v. Rumsfeld and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The first case questions whether President Bush has the authority to identify, seize and detain an American citizen as an enemy combatant on U.S. soil. Padilla is an American citizen who traveled abroad, met with associates of al-Qaeda, received training in explosives, and returned to the United States to engage in terrorism, at the direction of al-Qaeda. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld concerns the executive branch's right to detain a "citizen" captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan by the military forces of an American ally...

As the Supreme Court weighs the rights of the captured al Qaeda fighters whose cases will be heard today, we hope it won't forget the rights of the rest of us. Namely, Americans have the right to be protected against enemy attack. This appears to be a more open question than it should be with the current High Court, whose sense of its own importance is such that it just might think it can do a better job of running the war on terror than an elected chief executive. For more than 200 years, the Supreme Court has deferred to...

In 1997-1998, I became aware of clearly observable warnings of hostile terrorist intentions against America, by Osama bin Laden. For over eighteen months -- as part of an investigation for Reader's Digest -- I had been learning from a variety of former U.S. intelligence officers and foreign sources about a vast, world wide network of Islamist radicals, who had emerged from the U.S.-backed war to drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. At their head was the shadowy Saudi renegade, Osama bin Laden, whom his followers referred to as the "Prince of Jihad." What made bin Laden unusual was his background....

<p>An American captured in Afghanistan in 2001 will meet his attorney for the first time next week, but it won't be a one-on-one private session.</p> <p>Yaser Esam Hamdi has been held without charges or access to lawyers, like hundreds of other prisoners labeled so-called enemy combatants.</p>

Contrary to the fearful voice of Associate Justice Robert Jackson dissenting in Korematsu vs. United States (1944), emergency powers asserted by presidents in times of war have not turned into loaded guns lying around for misuse by any zealous official who claims an urgent need. History speaks otherwise. During the Civil War, for instance, President Abraham Lincoln extraconstitutionally summoned an army, expended unappropriated funds, unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and suppressed speech friendly to the Confederacy. Congress belatedly ratified Lincoln's legislative usurpations. They were not repeated during the war. Neither did they establish presidential war principles that crept...

WASHINGTON (AP) Supreme Court to rule in case of U.S.-born terrorism detainee.

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Pentagon lets terrorism suspect see lawyerPublished December 3, 2003     ASSOCIATED PRESS     Reversing course, Pentagon officials have decided to allow a U.S.-born terrorism suspect access to a lawyer, the Defense Department announced yesterday.     The Defense Department will make arrangements over the next few days for a lawyer to visit Yaser Esam Hamdi "subject to appropriate security restrictions," a Pentagon statement said.     Mr. Hamdi is being held as an "enemy combatant," a designation the Bush administration says denies him rights to a lawyer or a trial.     The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear an appeal from a public...

DoD Announces Detainee Allowed Access to Lawyer The Department of Defense announced today that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an enemy combatant detained at the Charleston Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., will be allowed access to a lawyer subject to appropriate security restrictions. Arrangements for that access will be developed over the next few days. DoD is allowing Hamdi access to counsel as a matter of discretion and military policy; such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent. DoD decided to allow Hamdi access to counsel because Hamdi is a U.S....