United States officials said on Monday that the administration has freed an American citizen whom the military imprisoned without trial for more than 13 months as a suspected Islamic State member. The man, a dual American and Saudi citizen, was captured in September 2017 by a Kurdish militia in Syria. The Kurds turned him over to the American military, which held him as a wartime detainee at a base in Iraq. Officials said he was released in Bahrain, where his wife and daughter are living. The identity of the man has been kept secret, so he has been called “John Doe” in court filings and public debates. This case has established the precedent of how the government locked up a citizen for more than a year without charging him with a crime, and the issue of whether the government can or should imprison American terrorism suspects without trial as enemy combatants, rather than prosecuting them.
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