ISIS Suspect in Military Custody Somehow Refuses To Be Released into Syria
The U.S. Department of Defense plans to forcibly release a Saudi-American dual citizen in Syria who has been detained by the military for nine months on suspicions of fighting for the Islamic State, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.
The U.S. military gave the unnamed suspect, known only as John Doe, the option of release “either in a town or outside an Internally Displaced Person camp” in Syria, but the suspect refused either option, as revealed in the court documents.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union representing Doe want to challenge the notion that he is an “enemy combatant,” and question the legality of the U.S. detaining him in the first place.
Doe’s counsel opposes the decision, claiming the U.S. military could not have legally detained the suspect believed to be an ISIS fighter under the congressional stipulation passed after 9/11 called the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
The lawyers say the authorization doesn’t apply to Doe because the legislation does not broadly cover the use of military force on ISIS terrorists or the war on the Islamic State.
Doe claims he did not go to Syria to join ISIS, but rather to document and report on the violence in the country.
According to court filings, he did attempt to get press credentials by news organizations whose names were redacted from the documents.
Justice Department lawyers and the government report that Doe attended an ISIS training camp in Syria starting in March 2015 and swore allegiance to a deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He subsequently held several positions over the course of two and a half years, working for the ISIS bureaucracy, providing fuel for ISIS vehicles, handling expenses and doing other administrative work.
Doe was captured at a checkpoint in Syria in September 2017 by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon-backed militia fighting ISIS in Syria, as he tried to escape air strikes in the country and flee to Turkey. Court documents reveal that he identified himself as “daesh,” or ISIS, and was carrying, among other things, “military style handbooks” about bomb building.
Despite this, government officials say they don’t have enough evidence to charge the suspect in a federal court and instead will release him within the next 72 hours.
“The government has effectively admitted that it has no reason to continue detaining our client and that he does not pose a threat,” ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz said in a statement Wednesday, according to Politico. “But, instead of offering a safe release, they want to dump an American citizen onto the side of the road in a war-torn country without any assurances of protection and no identification.
“We’ll be asking the court to immediately intervene and ensure the safe release of our client.”
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington upheld a previously appealed decision by the Justice Department that they could not forcibly transfer an American citizen to a foreign country without that individual having the opportunity to challenge the enemy designation.
The courts also ordered that the Justice Department give 72-hours notice before a transfer was made, which they honored in the Defense Department’s motion on Wednesday.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Department is filing this Notice of its intent to release Petitioner in the town specified in the Declaration no sooner than 72 hours hence.”
This will likely be appealed by ACLU lawyers before the release can be fulfilled.
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