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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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U.S. Citizen Says He’s Being Tortured in Kuwait

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) - A U.S. citizen says he is being "tortured and beaten" in a Kuwaiti deportation prison, but can't be sent home because the FBI put him on the "No Fly List." Nineteen-year-old Gulet Mohamed sued the FBI, the Terrorist Screening Center and the U.S. Attorney General, seeking an injunction taking him off the list and allowing him to come home.

In his federal complaint, Mohamed says he went to Kuwait in December to renew his Kuwaiti visitor's visa at an airport in Kuwait. There, he says, "he was detained by unknown assailants, tortured and interrogated for more than a week, and then transferred to a deportation facility."

During his abduction, he says he was "repeatedly beaten and tortured by his interrogators. Mr. Mohamed's interrogators struck him in the face with their hands regularly and in Mr. Mohamed's estimate more than a hundred times. The interrogators whipped his feet and other parts of his body with sticks. At one point, the interrogators threatened to run currents of electricity through Mr. Mohamed's genitals."

Mohamed says he does not face any criminal charges in the United States, but Kuwaiti officials told his family that "they are holding him at the behest of the United States government and are willing to release him since they have no interest in keeping him in custody."

But because the FBI has him on the Do Not Fly List, he can't be deported and he continues to be subjected to threatening interrogation sessions from FBI agents, without an attorney, he says.

"The United States is the only place Kuwait can deport Mr. Mohamed. However, due to defendants' actions, Mr. Mohamed simply cannot board a plane to the United States," the complaint states.

The Terrorist Screening Center, a sector of the FBI, puts people on the Do Not Fly List using recommendations from a variety of government agencies, but the government entities involved in the list's creation "have not provided travelers with a fair and effective mechanism through which they can challenge their inclusion on the No Fly List," Mohamed says.

Mohamed is suing for violations to his right to citizenship and unlawful agency action. Defendants include Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., FBI Director Robert Mueller and Timothy Healy, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center.

He wants an injunction requiring the FBI to tell him why he's on the list and to let him rebut the charges and clear his name.

Mohamed, a resident of Virginia, is represented by Nadhira Al-Khalili of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.

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