WASHINGTON (AP) — A Louisiana-born 21-year-old accused of being a soldier in the al-Qaida war on America has become a test case on the limits of government power to hold its citizens indefinitely without trial and without a lawyer.
If Yaser Esam Hamdi can be imprisoned in a military jail with few of the constitutional protections afforded Americans facing criminal prosecution, then other U.S. citizens could be similarly held, some legal scholars say.
"That sort of thing used to happen in the Soviet Union and may still happen today in Iran and Iraq, but it's not the sort of thing that should happen in the United States," said Stephen Dycus, a national security law expert at Vermont Law School.
Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November after a prison uprising by suspected Taliban and al-Qaida members. He was transported along with hundreds of other alleged enemy soldiers to a makeshift prison at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.