SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 1/3/2024
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. government created a “No Fly List” – a list of people whom the government believes pose enough of a risk to national security that they should not be allowed to board a commercial flight through U.S. airspace. On Jan. 8, in FBI v. Fikre, the justices will consider whether a lawsuit brought by an Oregon man who was stranded overseas for more than four years after he was placed on the No Fly List can go forward when the FBI has taken him off the list and has promised not to put him back on the list “based on the currently available information.”
The plaintiff in the case, Yonas Fikre, learned in 2010 that he had been placed on the No Fly List. FBI agents interrogated Fikre, a U.S. citizen of Eritrean descent who was living in Sudan at the time, about his contacts with a mosque in Oregon, and they suggested that if he agreed to become an FBI informant, he could be removed from the list, which would allow him to return to the United States.
Fikre declined the FBI’s offer. A few months later, during a trip to the United Arab Emirates, Fikre was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Officials there told Fikre that his detention and interrogation came at the FBI’s request.
After his release from detention in the UAE, Fikre flew to Sweden and applied for asylum there. The Swedish government eventually denied his request and chartered a private jet to return him to the United States.
Fikre went to federal court in 2013, alleging that the FBI violated his constitutional rights by placing him on the No Fly List. In 2019, a federal district judge dismissed his claims as moot – that is, no longer a live controversy – because the government had removed Fikre from the list and promised not to put him on it again “based on the currently available information.”
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-to-consider-whether-oregon-man-can-sue-fbi-over-no-fly-list/
