Imagine you're a young Muslim American, born and raised in the United States. You have a few, minor indiscretions, and your parents believe you'll grow up and settle down if you go to Yemen to learn Arabic and find a wife. While in Yemen, you happen to meet another American who Yemeni authorities later arrest as a terror suspect. Because of that incidental contact, on your way home the FBI questions you, finds nothing, but leaves you stranded in Cairo anyway.
WASHINGTON — As a 26-year-old Muslim American man who spent 18 months in Yemen before heading home to Virginia in early May, Yahya Wehelie caught the attention of the F.B.I. Agents stopped him while he was changing planes in Cairo, told him he was on the no-fly list and questioned him about his contacts with another American in Yemen, one accused of joining Al Qaeda and fatally shooting a hospital guard.
For six weeks, Mr. Wehelie has been in limbo in the Egyptian capital. He and his parents say he has no radical views, despises Al Qaeda and merely wants to get home to complete his education and get a job.
But after many hours of questioning by F.B.I. agents, he remains on the no-fly list. When he offered to fly home handcuffed and flanked by air marshals, Mr. Wehelie said, F.B.I. agents turned him down.
“The lady told me that Columbus sailed the ocean blue a long time ago when there were no planes,” Mr. Wehelie said in a telephone interview from Cairo. “I’m an innocent American in exile, and I have no way to get home.”
....
At least three Americans have been detained in recent weeks by the Yemeni authorities on suspicion of terrorist connections, and civil liberties advocates have identified a half-dozen Americans or legal United States residents on the no-fly list who are stranded abroad, most of them after visiting Yemen.
....
...Yahya Wehelie’s younger brother, Yusuf, 19, who was stopped with him in Cairo, faced a shorter but even more harrowing time in Egypt. Questioned first by the F.B.I., Yusuf was later held for three days by Egyptian security officers, blindfolded, chained to a wall and roughed up before being allowed to travel home May 12, he said in an interview.
The American Civil Liberties Union says it has been contacted by a dozen people who say they have been improperly placed on the no-fly list since December, half of them Americans abroad.
It certainly would appear that FBI is using the no-fly list to exile American citizens, to banish them. Sure, you can come home, they say, just not by airplane. There are means of getting off of the no-fly lists if you are on it because of mistaken identity or a similar circumstance, but those exceptions don't cover Wehelie, or apparently the half-dozen others civil liberties groups have identified who are also in this limbo. If there is reasonable suspicion to keep these people on a no-flly list, bring them home, conduct a proper investigation and either prosecute them or take them off of the no-fly list.
It could be worse, as Adam Serwer points out. Under the Bush administration, similar circumstances ended up with Canadian citizen Maher Arar being rendered to Syria to be tortured. Not being as bad as torture, however, is not good enough for the Obama administration. Exile isn't due process.