Secret no-fly evidence rejected by judge COURTS

Rahinah Ibrahim Rahinah Ibrahim Photo: -, McManis Faulkner Law Photo: -, McManis Faulkner Law Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Secret no-fly evidence rejected by judge 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A federal judge in San Francisco has indignantly rejected an attempt by the Obama administration to use secret evidence to derail a former Stanford student's challenge to her apparent inclusion on the government's no-fly list.

The government must halt its "persistent and stubborn refusal" to follow the applicable laws, said U.S. District Judge William Alsup.

Rahinah Ibrahim's name on the confidential no-fly list has barred her and one of her four children from returning to the United States for nearly eight years. She was a Stanford graduate student in January 2005 when she was first stopped at San Francisco International Airport and prevented from boarding a flight to her native Malaysia.

She was arrested and jailed briefly by San Francisco police but was allowed to take the flight the next day, with her 14-year-old daughter. When Ibrahim tried to return two months later, however, she was again stopped and told she was subject to arrest. The U.S. Consulate later said her student visa had been revoked under a terrorism law.

Ibrahim, now 47, eventually earned her Stanford doctorate from abroad and is a university professor in Malaysia. She settled claims against police and others involved in her arrest for $225,000 in 2009, but is still challenging her inclusion on the no-fly list.

'Hard to swallow'

In the latest development, President Obama's Justice Department privately contacted Alsup last fall and said an agent would arrive shortly carrying evidence for dismissal of the suit. According to the judge's description of the phone call, the agent would then retrieve the evidence and take it back to headquarters while Alsup wrote his ruling, all without notice to Ibrahim's lawyers.

Alsup, who had dismissed the suit twice before and had been overruled both times by a federal appeals court, said the government's actions this time were "too hard to swallow."

Legal precedents "favor maintenance of our traditional system of fair play in which both sides have notice of the arguments and evidence being used against them," Alsup said in a ruling dated Dec. 20.

He also criticized the Justice Department for arguing that Ibrahim's lawyers couldn't be "trusted to handle sensitive information," noting that federal agencies had cleared the lawyers to review confidential material in the case years ago.

Alsup said he had refused to look at the department's secret evidence. "It is time to resolve this case on the merits," he concluded. Ibrahim's lead attorney, James McManis, said the judge has scheduled the trial for December of this year.

The Justice Department's approach to Alsup "smacks of secret government and star-chamber proceedings," McManis said.

Thousands on list

The Department of Homeland Security maintains lists of hundreds of thousands of passengers who allegedly pose a risk of terrorism or air piracy, information it shares with airlines. Those on the no-fly list are barred from boarding. Those on a larger "selectee" list can fly but are subject to additional searches.

Government audits since the lists were established a decade ago have acknowledged thousands of errors. After receiving complaints of mistaken listings, however, Homeland Security officials respond with letters that refuse to disclose a complainant's status and merely declare that any errors have now been corrected, said an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has sued the department.

"It doesn't make anyone safer for innocent people not to be allowed to fly," attorney Nusrat Choudhury said Tuesday. She said the ACLU suit, pending before a federal judge in Oregon, was filed on behalf of 15 Americans who suddenly found themselves barred from flying in 2009 or 2010 and in some cases have been stranded overseas.

In response to Alsup's ruling, the Justice Department filed papers Jan. 3 that again sought to dismiss Ibrahim's suit while declining to say whether she was on the no-fly list or to discuss criteria for placing or removing names from the list.

"Disclosing this information would reveal or tend to reveal information that is classified," government lawyers wrote.