The U.S. government appears poised to allow 19 year-old Gulet Mohamed, who says he was abused while in the custody of Kuwaiti authorities, to return home following a lawsuit filed by his attorney Gadeir Abbas.
U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga said Mohamed's inability to return to the U.S. appears to be a "clear violation" of his rights, but he said Mohamed's lawyers with the Council on American-Islamic Relations needed to submit sworn statements to bolster their case. He scheduled another hearing on Thursday to follow up on the government's assertion that Mohamed will soon be on his way home and to allow Mohamed's lawyers another chance to prove their case, if necessary.
"It is clear on the face of the complaint ... that this individual, absent some extraordinary circumstance, would have an absolute right to re-enter the United States," Trenga said during Tuesday's hearing.
The rapidity with which the government appears to be working to get Mohamed home speaks to how much their behavior here probably skirts the line of what is legal. As Nick Baumann points out, it also allows them to keep doing this kind of thing, since a lengthy lawsuit would force a closer look at the practice of "proxy detention," or using the no-fly list to facilitate the detention and interrogation of American citizens by governments with fewer legal constraints on how they're allowed to treat individuals in their custody.
Two things: An absolute right of return for an American citizen cannot be conditional on answering questions from law enforcement. The government has predictably hedged on its use of the no-fly list in this manner by stating that Mohamed "does not have a right to travel by airplane," but if there's no other way for him to return home then the government's behavior is still probably illegal.
Moreover, as a practical matter it's somewhat ridiculous to suggest there's no possible way to transport Mohamed safely by plane. The threat to an aircraft would come from someone the government hasn't been watching, not someone whose spent the past few weeks in a Kuwaiti detention facility with little access to the outside world.
