ACLU to challenge ‘forcible rendering’ of unnamed US citizen, held by US military in Iraq for seven months after capture by Syrian rebels

An American citizen who has been held without charge in Iraq since last September by the US military now faces being moved to an unidentified foreign country under government plans that his lawyers are scrambling to challenge.



A heavily redacted court document, released on Tuesday at the orders of a federal judge in Washington, reveals the intention of the defense secretary, Gen James Mattis, to move the detainee to a third country, having kept him captive for the past seven months in Iraq.

The name of the receiving country is being kept secret, though reports have suggested it is Saudi Arabia.

The American Civil Liberties Union plans to challenge the transfer, which it argues is unlawful. The detainee – whose identity is also being kept secret and who is referred to in legal papers only as John Doe – was held for the first four months with no access to any lawyer until the ACLU waged a fierce court battle and won the right to represent him.

The judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan of the District of Columbia, called the government’s resistance to grant the man his basic right of a lawyer “both remarkable and troubling”. She has also forbidden the US military from moving the detainee without giving lawyers 72 hours to challenge the decision.

The civil liberties group is calling the transfer plan a case of “forcible rendering”. As such it has echoes of the black-site renditions program that was run by the US government in the wake of 9/11.

“The Trump administration has been detaining this American citizen unlawfully for more than seven months, and forcibly rendering him to another country would be an unconscionable violation of his constitutional rights. The government has no legal authority to detain this US citizen in the first place, and it clearly lacks any legal authority to transfer him to the custody of another government,” said the ACLU’s attorney in the case, Jonathan Hafetz.



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John Doe was captured by Syrian rebels as a suspected member of Isis. When his US citizenship was discovered, he was handed over to the US military on 14 September. Previous court documents have indicated that the man was born in the US but also has a passport from Saudi Arabia, where he was brought up.

The government has alleged that the individual signed up with Isis in July 2014. According to the Washington Post, he allegedly agreed to join as a “fighter” but not a “suicide bomber”.

In their nine-page filing, government lawyers argue that “extensive diplomatic discussions” have taken place with the unidentified third country, and that it is now “imperative that the transfer occur quickly and smoothly”. They claim that any delay would “undermine the United States’ credibility with an important foreign partner that has agreed to this request”.

A hearing over the government’s transfer plans will be held before Chutkan on Thursday.