Hamdi

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — The Justice Department has reached agreement with Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan nearly three years ago and held as an enemy combatant, that will allow him to go free without facing charges.

Now I'm confused. This is the guy that had to be held in solitary confinement for years, incommunicado and without access to a lawyer, because he was such a threat to national security. This is the "enemy combatant" guy against whom the administration fought habeus corpus all the way to the Supreme Court, along the way refusing to even let a judge see any documents relating to his capture. This is the guy who's been held in detention for months since, because apparently, once called to, the administration decided it would prefer not to put this guy on trial at all. And now, they are letting him go, in an arrangement that is the international equivalent of, "Get out of here, keep your nose clean, and don't ever let us catch you around here again."

What the heck is going on? Could it be that there really is no case against him? That, as Hamdi has maintained, he was not even fighting against the US, but was captured by the Northern Alliance at a time we were paying them bounty for prisoners, and has been held in solitary for years for no good reason? But that would mean that, not only had they held an innocent man in detention, but that they'd been lying to the judiciary, and the American people, about what a threat he was. An American citizen, held in solitary for years, for reasons that aren't even sufficient to go to trial. Brrr.

Today a Justice Department spokesman said "the United States has no interest in detaining enemy combatants beyond the point that they pose a threat to the U.S. and our allies." Odd that Hamdi's threat should evaporate as soon as the Supreme Court said he must be tried or released.

I haven't seen a report that addresses whether the release agreement contains an agreement that Hamdi not sue for wrongful arrest and detention. I'd like to know. It certainly seems like maybe the administration decided it didn't want a trial revealing the details of how little they had on this guy.