After taking a trip out of the country, leaving his home in Portland, Oregon, to visit Sudan in 2010, Yonas Fikre was approached by FBI agents who tried to recruit him as a government informant. Most likely because he refused the FBI’s advances, he was arrested, tortured, and interrogated, and then placed on a No Fly list. He was stuck outside the US for 6-or-so years. That story is itself appalling, and we’ll hear it in more depth in just a moment, but, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled with a full consensus – a 9-to-0 decision, that the government must allow Yonas Fikre to pursue a court case in which he claims that being on the official No Fly list caused him reputational harm and violated his due process. The FBI argued that since they took him off the list, the case was moot. Essentially, the Supreme Court ruling admits that the FBI’s No Fly list can continue to be interrogated in court.
Joining us to discuss the case is Justin Sadowsky, a trial attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR. CAIR is the organization that brought Fikre’s lawsuit and successfully argued it in the Supreme Court. Justin, our guest, co-wrote many of the briefs in that case.
Check out CAIR’s website: https://cair.com/
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