WASHINGTON, 29 August 2004 — A US judge on Friday scolded US authorities for failing to explain why they have held incommunicado a US citizen labeled as an “enemy combatant” after he was captured with Taleban forces in Afghanistan in 2001.

Yasser Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana and raised in Saudi Arabia, was held with other accused Taleban fighters at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until being transferred in April 2002 to a naval brig in South Carolina, where he has been held in solitary confinement.

“This Court will not stand by and allow (the government) to persist in the solitary detainment of Hamdi without a satisfactory explanation,” Judge Robert Doumar, of the US District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, wrote in his court order.

Doumar’s order came in response to a request from prosecutors to delay by seven days a court hearing that had been set for Monday. In their request, prosecutors said they needed a delay because they were very close to reaching a deal that could send Hamdi back to Saudi Arabia.

Doumar set two conditions to grant a one-week delay. By Monday, authorities must issue a statement explaining why they have held Hamdi incommunicado for more than two years and provide his attorney with certain documents related to his case.

If the government complies, Doumar said he would delay the hearing on Hamdi’s habeas corpus petition challenging his enemy combatant designation until Sept. 7, but that he would not delay it any further.

Otherwise, Doumar said the government will have to bring Hamdi to a hearing on Tuesday.

Hamdi was designated an enemy combatant and denied constitutional rights due to a US citizen after his capture in Afghanistan in 2001. Challenges to the government’s detention of Hamdi, who has not been charged with a crime, went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in June that he must be allowed access to the US court system.

In their request for a seven-day delay, which they filed Thursday, prosecutors said they needed more time to finalize an agreement with Hamdi’s attorneys.

Defense attorney Frank Dunham argued that his client’s detention was “inhumane”.