JEDDAH, 12 October 2004 — Yasser Esam Hamdi, has been released from US custody and has returned to Saudi Arabia to be reunited with his family. His arrival in Riyadh marks the end of a three-year ordeal that has captured international headlines and strained US-Saudi relations. “He came home. He has just arrived and we are happy to see him,” said his father, Esam Hamdi, yesterday.

Saudis who were following the Hamdi case in the press expressed relief at receiving news of his release. One said, “We can all breathe a sigh of relief because he was imprisoned for no reason.”

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki confirmed that Yasser arrived in Riyadh around noon. “His parents were there to receive him. The minute he arrived, he said he had given up his US nationality.” Yasser was born in the US state of Louisiana in 1980 while his father was living there working for SABIC. Yasser’s attorney, Frank Dunham Jr., said he spoke with Yasser shortly after he had arrived in Riyadh on a military plane. He said Yasser felt “awesome.”

The deal with the US government which freed Yasser required that he give up his US citizenship and return to Saudi Arabia. Other conditions for his release include being barred from the United States for the next 10 years and not traveling outside Saudi Arabia for the next five years, that he renounce terrorism, not travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan or Israel and that he report any travel outside the Kingdom for the next 15 years to the US government. A further condition of his release is that he not sue the US government for his captivity.

In June, Yasser’s case led the United States Supreme Court to render a decision limiting the president’s power to hold enemy combatants indefinitely. Yasser, despite his incarceration, was never charged or convicted of a crime.

Washington agreed in September to free Yasser by the end of the month but Saudi officials complained that they knew too little about the deal struck with his lawyers and held up the departure until Sunday, according to an official who asked not to be named. A US government official said that the Kingdom had raised questions about the enforcement of the conditions of Yasser’s agreement with the US. A State Department spokesman said that Saudi Arabia had been assured that enforcement of the conditions will not be its responsibility. After Yasser’s release, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “The United States appreciates the cooperation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in facilitating this transfer.”

Yasser was arrested by US forces in Afghanistan in November 2001 while allegedly fighting alongside the Taleban against the coalition forces. After his arrest he was sent to Guantanamo Bay along with other suspected Taleban fighters and alleged Al-Qaeda operatives. When it was discovered that he had been born in Louisiana and was therefore a US citizen, he was transferred to a Navy brig (jail) in Charleston, South Carolina.

Yasser has spent the last three years in solitary confinement. In addition to the mental stress a person endures under such circumstances, Yasser was forced to strip completely naked and submit to a body cavity search on an almost daily basis. Anytime he was moved out of his cell, he was chained and shackled.

In Guantanamo, he was blind-folded. As a maximum security prisoner, he had no contact with other prisoners and was allowed out of his cell to shower and use the telephone for an hour every two days.