Both Hamad and Adam still face travel and work restrictions under the terms of their release, says Mr. Wax, a Portland, Ore.-based federal public defender, who was assigned to work on Hamad's case. The two Sudanese men have pursued cases to clear their names in US court, through the writ of habeas corpus. Under this provision, the government must show evidence to prove that a person should be detained or it must release that person.

Adam's case for habeas corpus was dismissed, but Hamad's continues to await a hearing in the Washington, D.C., district courts. The two men say they will be filing a civil suit seeking compensation for their years in Guantánamo.

On Dec. 5, 2007, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Boumediene v. Bush, which could affect the dozens of habeas corpus cases of individual Guantánamo detainees. In the case, the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that Guantánamo detainees were entitled to habeas corpus rights, even if they are noncitizens. The court's decision is pending and could come anytime.

At the time of his capture, on July 18, 2002, Hamad says he was neither a soldier nor a terrorist, but an administrator of health services for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi-funded charity. Hamad's work included providing medical services to Afghan refugees living around Peshawar. But American suspicion fell on WAMY, because of its outspoken support for militant groups, and because Osama bin Laden's brother, Abdullah, was on its board.

Held and interrogated in a Pakistani prison for six months, Hamad was transferred to Bagram Air Base outside Kabul for two months and then sent to Guantánamo. His treatment was "inhumane," Hamad says. "Every unimaginable transgression was committed," including beatings and torture.

But the methods that hurt Hamad the most were those that were aimed to denigrate Muslim traditions: forced public nudity of prisoners, disrespectful handling of the Koran, and even turning up loud music during the times of prayer.

Hamad's detention, he says, had another consequence. Back home in Khartoum, Hamad's wife – suddenly impoverished without Hamad's salary – struggled to find medicines for their sick daughter, Fida. The young girl died in 2005 at the age of 3.

Like Hamad, Adam – arrested in Peshawar on May 27, 2002, by Pakistani police – says he thinks he was arrested mainly for his Arabic origins. As the director of a Pakistani school for orphans run by the now-banned Jamiat Ihya Al-Turath Al-Islami, Adam says he had nothing to do with militancy, or indeed with the broader missions of the Kuwaiti charity that ran the school.

1 | Page 2 | 3 | Next Page