WASHINGTON, 29 September 2004 — The United States has agreed to release accused long-held enemy combatant Yaser Hamdi by Thursday and won’t ask Saudi Arabia to detain him, according to court documents.

The documents, made available on Monday, spelled out the terms of the agreement calling for the return to Saudi Arabia of Hamdi, whose case led to a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in June that Americans held in this nation as “enemy combatants” must be able to contest their detention.

The American-born and Saudi-raised Hamdi has been in US military custody since his capture on the battlefield in Afghanistan in November 2001 and was accused of fighting for the Taleban militia that had harbored Osama Bin Laden.

Hamdi maintained he never joined a Taleban military unit, never engaged in armed conflict against the United States and was not affiliated with Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

The agreement said Hamdi will be released from custody at the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina, after obtaining the documents and clearances needed to go to Saudi Arabia.

The agreement also said Hamdi agreed not to travel to United States for 10 years, cannot travel outside Saudi Arabia for five years and has to tell the US Embassy of plans to travel outside Saudi Arabia for 15 years.

Details of the agreement, announced last week, were not released until Monday.

It said the United States will not request that the Saudi government detain Hamdi “as considerations of US national security do not require his detention.”

Hamdi renounced “terrorism and violent jihad,” and agreed to notify Saudi officials if he becomes aware of any planned or executed acts of terrorism.

In January 2002 Hamdi was taken to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects are imprisoned.

He was moved in April of 2002 to a naval prison in Norfolk, Virginia, after US officials discovered he had been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hamdi later was moved to the Charleston jail, but no charges have ever been brought against him.