Saudi detainee exchanges U.S. citizenship for freedom

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A Saudi-American captured in Afghanistan, labeled an enemy combatant and held in U.S. solitary confinement for nearly three years without charges returned to his family Monday after agreeing to forfeit his U.S. citizenship for freedom.

Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 during the U.S. battle against the Taliban, landed in Saudi Arabia about noon on Monday, Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said.

“His parents were there to receive him. The minute he arrived, he said he had given up his U.S. nationality,” al-Turki said.

The deal Hamdi made with the U.S. government required he give up his American citizenship and live in Saudi Arabia for five years. He also had to renounce terrorism and agree not to sue the United States over his imprisonment. Hamdi will never be allowed to travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan or Syria.

Hamdi’s lawyer Frank Dunham Jr., a federal public defender in Virginia, said he spoke to Hamdi by telephone after his military plane landed and he said he felt “awesome.”

“I think one thing I’m disappointed in is I just wish everybody in the U.S. could know this young man. This is a really nice young man, someone Saudi Arabia can be proud of,” Dunham said.

“He didn’t fight anybody. He didn’t shoot anybody. He didn’t do anything that commentators assumed that he did. He’s come through it with a greater appreciation for wisdom of his father, who told him not to go to Afghanistan in the first place.”

Hamdi was believed to have been taken to his family home in the eastern industrial town of al-Jubail.

Hamdi’s case led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the president’s powers to indefinitely hold enemy combatants.