Supreme Court ruling was unanimous.
The FBI must face a lawsuit filed by a Muslim man who has since been removed from the bureau’s “no-fly list,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on March 19.
“The government has failed to demonstrate that this case is moot,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a unanimous ruling.
“While the government’s representation that it will not relist Mr. Fikre may mean that his past conduct is not enough to warrant relisting, that does not speak to whether the government might relist him if he engages in the same or similar conduct in the future,” he added later.
Yonas Fikre, a Eritrean national and American citizen, sued the FBI in 2015 after having issues traveling due to being on the no-fly list, which is part of the government’s terrorist screening database. It bars certain people from flying.
“The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision is a major blow to the lawlessness that has allowed the FBI to amass almost two million people on their secret lists. This is but the latest indication that the FBI’s secret watchlists have no place in our country,” Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing Mr. Fikre, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The FBI declined to comment.
Told He Couldn’t Return
Mr. Fikre experienced problems flying, including when he traveled to Sudan in 2009 from Oregon, according to court papers.
While in Sudan at the U.S. embassy there, two FBI agents told Mr. Fikre he could not return to the United States since he was on the no-fly list. The agents also asked him about the mosque he attended and offered to look into having him removed from the list if he became a bureau informant.
Mr. Fikre refused.
Mr. Fikre then went to the United Arab Emirates, where he allegedly was detained for months on direction from the FBI. He eventually ended up in Sweden.
The government in 2015 declined to remove Mr. Fikre from the last, alleging he “is an individual who represents a threat of engaging in or conducting a violent act of terrorism and who is operationally capable of doing so.” The information supporting placing and keeping Mr. Fikre on the last was too sensitive to share, the government said at the time.
Mr. Fikre then filed the suit.
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