Yaser Esam Hamdi - Afghanistan

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, 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 was quashed after a three-day battle which included heavy airsupport from U.S. AC-130 gunships and Black Hawk helicopters. One American was killed and 9 were injured along with about 50 Northern Alliance soldiers. Between 200 to 400 Taliban prisoners were killed during the prison uprising. Two American prisoners, 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. American 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?".

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 January 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.