Yaser Hamdi to Go Free
Bump and Update: It's official. Yaser Hamdi will be released and deported to Saudi Arabia.
After weeks of negotiations over his release, lawyers for the Justice Department and Mr. Hamdi announced an agreement requiring him to renounce his American citizenship. The agreement also bars him from leaving Saudi Arabia for a time and requires him to report possible terrorist activity, his lawyer said, although legal analysts said the arrangement would be difficult for the United States to enforce.
Although Mr. Hamdi was born in 1980 in Louisiana, where his father worked for an oil company, the family left the United States when he was a toddler and returned to Saudi Arabia. He lived there most of his life, and most of his family remains there.
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Original Post: 9/16/04
Detained "enemy combant" Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan and held over three years without charges, will be freed and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, where he grew up, according to his lawyer and others familiar with the case. One small detail: He has to give up his American citizenship to avail himelf of the deal--even though he has never been charged with a crime.
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