Enemy combatant's release delayed
Saudi government objects to terms of release
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- The U.S.-born, Saudi national who has spent nearly three years in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant was still being held Wednesday night.
Yaser Esam Hamdi, 24, remained in a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina as U.S. and Saudi officials haggled over terms of his release, a deal that was reached last week between Hamdi's attorney and the Justice Department.
The Saudi government called the deal "unenforceable" and that Hamdi should be set free without conditions because he never broke a law.
"If he's guilty of something, we don't believe the U.S. government would let him go," Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail al-Jubeir told CNN in a phone interview. "It is an issue of fairness."
Under the terms of the deal, the United States would transport Hamdi in civilian clothes to Saudi Arabia no later than Thursday.
Also, Hamdi would not be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia for five years and would not be able to return to the United States for 10 years.
He also must renounce his U.S. citizenship and not participate in any terrorist activity, the agreement stated.
A senior Justice Department official said the State Department was handling the negotiations.
But the official added that if Hamdi violated the agreement "he may be taken back into custody as an enemy combatant."
Al-Jubeir said the Saudi government objects to being asked to enforce a deal in which it had no official say.
"How can we enforce that he can't leave for five years?" he asked. "If he has not committed a crime ... why are the conditions in place?"
In Riyadh, Hamdi's father, Esam, said the wait was agonizing.
"We are waiting for our son for three years," he told CNN.
Immediately after last week's deal was announced, he said friends and family were elated and "the telephone was ringing almost day and night."
The setbacks have caused great concern.
"It is a lot of stress on me, my wife, my kids and my brothers, my sisters, my uncle -- I mean the whole family," he said.
Public defender Frank Dunham said from the United States that if Hamdi is not released by Thursday night that he will ask for a hearing in U.S. District Court to try to get Hamdi moved from solitary confinement to better conditions.
Hamdi has been held since December 2001 after being captured by U.S.-allied Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.
He was armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and traveling with a military unit of the Taliban, the deposed regime that gave al Qaeda safe harbor in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has maintained.
Hamdi was the first detainee designated an "enemy combatant' by the Bush administration.
The Saudi government has said Hamdi went to Afghanistan for charitable purposes.
"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time," al-Jubeir said.
Hamdi was transferred in January 2002 with hundreds of other battlefield detainees to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana and has dual citizenship, then told his captors of his U.S. citizenship.
As a result, he was moved in April 2002 to a Navy brig in Norfolk, Virginia, and taken in August 2003 to the Charleston, South Carolina, facility where he is being held.
