Classified ’No Fly List’ stops Americans from returning to America, Blocks Witnesses From Testifying in Court
Judge will not let plaintiff or her lawyer see evidence in ‘no-fly list’ trial
From: Alternews
The no fly list, which doubled in size in a single year, made news in the past for including some individuals who are clearly not threats, like an 18-month-old child.
In this case, a Malaysian student named Rahinah Ibrahim was prevented from boarding a 2005 flight at San Francisco International Airport and was handcuffed and detained by police.
Eventually, Ibrahim was allowed to fly back to her home country of Malaysia. Yet she was prevented from returning to the U.S. after the State Department revoked her student visa, according an article published by The New York Times that provides the background of the case.
Ibrahim was reportedly denied a visa to come to her own trial and the Department of Homeland Security reportedly blocked Ibrahim’s daughter from entering the U.S. as well.
Ibrahim’s daughter, Raihan Mustafa Kamal, is a licensed attorney in Malaysia, was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. She was slated to observe and testify at the trial in San Francisco before she was blocked from boarding a flight in Kuala Lumpur.
In his latest report, Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project (part of the First Amendment Project), revealed that Judge William Alsup has prevented Ibrahim and her lawyers from seeing the classified evidence being used against her.
This move seems especially surprising since, as Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt notes, “Alsup himself has repeatedly questioned why certain information in the case was secret in the first place.”
Masnick reports that this ultimately appears to boil down to a process issue. That is, Ibrahim and her lawyers could have sought clearance to view the classified evidence, but they didn’t go through the process.
Since they did not begin the process, the judge said that it is now a bit late to suddenly demand the evidence.
“Plaintiff’s counsel could have sought clearance to view classified information well in advance of trial,” Alsup wrote. “Plaintiff’s counsel did not. Instead, plaintiff’s counsel waited until after trial to request an order for access to classified information.”
“This order will not permit plaintiff’s counsel to circumvent the usual classified clearance process at this late date when such unreasonable conditions are requested,” Alsup wrote.
Before the trial, Ibrahim was reportedly told that she could see the evidence if she was present in the courtroom. Of course, she couldn’t be in the courtroom since the State Department denied her the visa required to fly into the U.S.
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Read the full article at: alternews.co.uk
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Witness in “no-fly” trial finds she’s on “no-fly” list too
From: Papers, Please!
The Federal civil rights trial in Ibrahim v. DHS — the first lawsuit seeking judicial review of a government “no-fly” order to make it to trial — began this morning in San Francisco with a surprise:
When the case was called at 7:30 a.m., Elizabeth Pipkin and Christine Peek, pro bono lawyers for the plaintiff Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim, began by informing U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Dr. Ibrahim’s oldest daughter Raihan Mustafa Kamal was denied boarding in Kuala Lumpur yesterday when she tried to board a flight to San Francisco to observe and testify at the trial in her mother’s lawsuit.
Ms. Mustafa Kamal, an attorney licensed to practice law in Malaysia, was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. Ms. Mustafa Kamal was with her mother when Dr. Ibrahim was denied boarding on a flight from K.L. to San Francisco in 2005 (after having been told that her name had been removed from the “no-fly” list) under what now seem eerily similar circumstances. The DHS had been given notice that Ms. Mustafa Kamal would testify at the trial as an eyewitness to those events she witnessed in 2005.
According to Ms. Pipkin, airline employees who refused to check Ms. Kamal in for flights to the U.S. told her that they were acting on orders from the DHS. Airline staff in K.L. gave Ms. Mustafa Kamal a telephone number in Miami to call for further information, saying it was the number of an office of the CBP (the Customs and Border Protection division of DHS).
When Ms. Pipkin learned of this from Ms. Mustafa Kamal on Sunday night at 8 p.m. San Francisco time, she called the number Ms. Mustafa Kamal has been given. It was apparently a CBP office, but the person who answered the phone refused to give his name and refused to provide any information about what had happened to Ms. Mustafa Kamal. When Ms. Pipkin asked to speak with his supervisor, she was given another phone number that went to voicemail. She left a message, but nobody called back.
On hearing this account, Judge Alsup asked the lawyers representing the DHS and the other Federal agency and official defendants (led by Lily Farel of the Department of Justice) to respond.
After consulting with DHS agency counsel, Ms. Farel claimed that this was the first that any of the government’s lawyers in the case had heard about Ms. Mustafa Kamal’s having been prevented (by their client the DHS) from traveling to the U.S. to attend and testify at her mother’s trial.
Judge Alsup ordered the government defendants’ lawyers to investigate and report back. “You’ve got ten lawyers over there on your side of the courtroom. You can send one of them out in the hall to make a phone call and find out what’s going on.”
At the end of the first day’s session of the trial (more on that below), the governments’ lawyers told Judge Alsup that they had made inquiries and had been told that “the plaintiff’s daughter just missed her flight” and was rebooked on a flight tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon.
Needless to say, that story strains credulity. If Ms. Mustafa Kamal had merely missed her flight, why would she have been given a CBP phone number in Miami to call for information about what had happened? The governments’ lawyers insisted that, “That’s what we have been told”, but Judge Alsup wasn’t satisfied.
“We may have to have a separate evidentiary hearing about this,” Judge Alsup said, and ordered the defendants to provide further information tomorrow (Tuesday). “I want to know whether the government did something to obstruct a witness, a U.S. citizen.”
It’s possible that the DHS deliberately put Ms. Mustafa Kamal on the no-fly list (or put her back on the no-fly list) to prevent her from attending and testifying at her mother’s trial.
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Read the full article at: papersplease.org
READ: Immigration officer fired after putting wife on list of terrorists to stop her flying home
