A Citizen Gladly Departs

We apologize for any inconvenience that three years of solitary confinement, continuous interrogation and permanent stigma may have caused.

U.S. Releases Saudi-American It Had Captured in Afghanistan
By Joel Brinkley and Eric Lichtblau
New York Times, October 12, 2004

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 11 - The three-year odyssey of Yaser E. Hamdi, the Saudi-American college student found in the company of Taliban fighters in 2001 and held in prison since then, came to an end on Monday after a secret military flight from a Navy brig in South Carolina to the airport in Riyadh, where he was greeted by his rapturous family.

The United States had held Mr. Hamdi, 24, in solitary confinement as an "enemy combatant" for much of the past three years. One condition of his release required Mr. Hamdi, who was born in Baton Rouge, La., to renounce his American citizenship within a week of his arrival here.

Mr. Hamdi did not wait a week; the Saudi Interior Ministry said he had proclaimed he was no longer American as soon as he stepped off the plane about noon.

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