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Mr. Hamdi was born in Baton Rouge, La., when his father, Esam Fouad Hamdi, a Saudi Arabian citizen and chemical engineer, was working on a petrochemical project with Exxon. When the boy was 3, the family moved back to Saudi Arabia. His father said in a telephone interview that his son, who was studying marketing at King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, left in July 2001 for a combination of relief work and religious training in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

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The Bush administration says Mr. Hamdi became affiliated with a Taliban unit in Afghanistan. It says he received weapons training and remained with the unit after the Sept. 11 attacks and after the United States began bombing the Taliban and Al Qaeda on Oct. 7.

In November, Mr. Hamdi's unit surrendered to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. In February he was flown in a cargo plane to prison in Guantánamo Bay. Although he spoke English and told the authorities that he was born in the United States, he remained at Guantánamo until April, when the military confirmed his American citizenship and flew him to the Navy brig in Norfolk, Va., where he remains today. (The military has set aside Guantánamo for non-Americans.)

Actually, Mr. Hamdi's plane from Guantánamo first landed at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, leading to speculation that he would be charged in federal court in Virginia, where John Walker Lindh, another American captured on the Afghan battlefield, was being prosecuted. Under the law, a citizen returning to the United States is tried in the district where he arrives from abroad.

Shortly after landing at Dulles, the plane took off again for the Navy base at Norfolk. Mr. Dunham, the public defender, suggested that Mr. Hamdi had first landed at Dulles because the Justice Department was expected to charge him and try him in federal court, as it had Mr. Lindh. But, Mr. Dunham said, the plane's shift to Norfolk suggested that the Justice Department could not come up with any charges against him. The Justice Department has not commented on this issue.

Mr. Hamdi was assigned a public defender because of the assumption that criminal charges would be filed against him. Mr. Dunham immediately sought to interview his client to determine if he was indigent and needed a lawyer, but the Pentagon never responded. Since then, Mr. Dunham has represented Mr. Hamdi in numerous legal filings, but the government has intervened to bar him from seeing Mr. Hamdi.

On Monday, Mr. Dunham and the government are to argue in court over whether a Defense Department official's two-page, nine-paragraph statement is sufficient for the government to hold Mr. Hamdi without charges or access to a lawyer.

A lower court judge, Robert G. Doumar of Federal District Court, ruled in August that it was not sufficient. The government is appealing that ruling.

In court papers, the government argued that Mr. Hamdi's detention was lawful because Mr. Hamdi was captured on the battlefield. Mr. McNulty said that the decision to detain him was made by military personnel in Afghanistan and that a court-ordered re-examination of that process "would be unprecedented and could significantly hamper the nation's defense." The military, he said, is under no obligation to provide any more information with respect to captured combatants.

Mr. Dunham said, "Our position is that Hamdi should have an opportunity to know there's a proceeding going on in his name and to know that he has counsel."

A coalition of 18 civil liberties groups and 139 law professors is backing him. It says that the executive branch does not have the power to eliminate judicial review of Mr. Hamdi's rights by unilaterally assigning citizens "to an as-yet-undefined `enemy combatant' status."

Also backing Mr. Dunham is a task force of the American Bar Association, which says in a report that it makes no sense that Mr. Hamdi and Mr. Padilla have fewer rights than foreign citizens like Zacarias Moussaoui, whom the authorities have described as the "20th hijacker," and Richard Reid, the airline "shoe bomber." Mr. Reid, Mr. Moussaoui and Mr. Lindh all were charged in open court and had access to counsel.

The critics point to a 1971 law that says "no citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." The bar association task force called on Congress to establish clear standards and procedures governing the detention of American citizens.

In response to the task force's report, William J. Haynes II, general counsel for the Defense Department, said the United States Patriot Act passed Sept. 18 by Congress authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force" to protect the country against attacks.

"There is no due process or any other legal basis, under either domestic or international law, that entitles enemy combatants to legal counsel," Mr. Haynes said.