Taliban From The Bayou

As he stumbled out of the flooded, filth-filled hole that served as the last Taliban fortification in Mazar-i-Sharif last December, Yasser Hamdi heard a British journalist ask, "Where are you from?" Hamdi, who appeared upbeat even after six days in that besieged sewer, chirped up immediately. "Baton Rouge," he said. Just hearing a response surprised Neil Syson, a reporter for the Sun, a London tabloid. But the actual words floored him. "Louisiana?" someone asked incredulously. "Do you know it?" replied Hamdi.

There doesn't seem to be much doubt now that Yasser Esam Hamdi was born on the bayou. Or that Hamdi and alleged Taliban turncoat John Walker Lindh were among the holdouts in the Qala-i-Jangi prison riot that day, raising the possibility that the two knew each other. But they were separated immediately after capture because Lindh needed medical attention and Hamdi didn't appear to be injured. In February Hamdi was shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other suspected al-Qaeda men. "From the very beginning, there was a possibility in everyone's mind that he might be an American, because he spoke English," said General Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of Afghanistan forces. "I can tell you that at the time he left Afghanistan, we could neither confirm nor deny that he was an American citizen." In January the FBI and Louisiana's state highway patrol started an investigation that tiptoed around the state's strict privacy laws and involved hand searches for birth certificates. It led to one issued for Hamdi by Woman's Hospital in Baton Rouge in 1979.

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Beyond that there is nothing but doubt, since no one in Baton Rouge has yet claimed to recall the Hamdis, who returned to Saudi Arabia in the early '80s, according to officials. His father might have worked in the petrochemical industry, which forms the industrial base of Baton Rouge, or at Louisiana State University, where hundreds of Saudis have taken part in a petroleum-engineering program over the years. But oil companies have not been able to find a record of Hamdi's father or mother, nor has Louisiana State.

Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 hijackers, is eager to unload this latest hot potato. Officials there quietly hint that the family is of Palestinian, Egyptian or Yemeni origin--the surname is more common in those places--and would love to be able to drop-kick his genealogy to another Arab country. "We are looking into the claims. We are not exactly sure yet," said Nail al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington.

As Hamdi was being flown in a C-130 from Cuba to Dulles airport last Friday, officials at the Pentagon and State Department puzzled over his citizenship status. "He's in a legal never-never land," said a Defense Department official, "so until Justice determines his precise status, we'll hang on to him." Which means that Hamdi will hang out at a U.S. Navy brig in Norfolk, Va. If found to be an American, Hamdi will be prosecuted in a U.S. court, like Lindh, with the full deck of constitutional rights, or he could be court-martialed. As with Lindh, he could be charged with conspiracy to kill Americans, providing support for terrorists and using destructive devices during crimes of violence. Charges could include treason, which carries the death penalty. As a U.S. citizen, Hamdi cannot be brought before a military tribunal, which the Bush Administration is reserving for foreigners and probably just the big catches. It is possible that Hamdi may have claimed Saudi citizenship, or he may have fought in the armed forces of "another state," which could bring forfeiture of his citizenship under U.S. laws. But the Justice Department would not have gone to the trouble of delivering Hamdi if it believed he could not be tried in a U.S. court. The plane carrying Hamdi landed at Dulles so that his case can fall under the jurisdiction of the same federal court in Virginia in which Lindh is being tried. "We think he will have American citizenship," said Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke.

So after nearly 20 years abroad, some of it perhaps in combat against fellow citizens, Hamdi got a ticket home to the U.S. thanks to a Baton Rouge birth certificate. For the foreseeable future, however, his only view of the country of his birth will be from behind bars.