American ISIS Suspect Held in Iraq Has Right to Lawyer, Judge Rules
The government has refused to identify the man, but officials familiar with the matter have said he is a dual citizen of the United States
and Saudi Arabia who was born on American soil to visiting Saudi parents and raised in Saudi Arabia.
In a novel case pitting the individual rights of citizens against government wartime powers, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia also ordered the Pentagon not to monitor
that conversation — and told it not to transfer the man, who is being held in Iraq, until the A.C.L.U.
"Ensuring citizens detained by the government have access to a lawyer
and a court is essential to preserving the Constitution and the rule of law in America." National security officials initially wanted to prosecute the man in an American court for providing material support for terrorism, according to officials.
24, 2017
Calling the Trump administration’s position "disingenuous"
and "troubling," a federal judge on Saturday ordered the Pentagon to permit a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union to meet with a United States citizen who has been imprisoned in military custody for three months after being deemed an enemy combatant.
In 2004, when the Bush administration sent to Saudi Arabia a Guantánamo detainee who similarly was born on American soil
to visiting Saudi parents, the detainee, Yaser E. Hamdi, agreed to renounce his citizenship as part of the deal.
It is not clear whether the United States government would seek to make the man renounce his American citizenship —
and with it his right to enter the United States — as part of any such transfer.