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Portland man: I was tortured in UAE for refusing to become an FBI informant
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: March 23rd, 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/portland-man-...
When Yonas Fikre stepped off a luxury private jet at Portland airport last month, the only passenger on a $200,000 flight from Sweden, he braced for the worst. The 36-year-old Eritrean-born American was finally back in Portland at the end of a five-year odyssey that began with a simple business trip but landed him in an Arab prison where he alleges he was tortured at the behest of US anti-terrorism officials because he refused to become an informant at his mosque in Oregon. Fikre is suing the FBI, two of its agents and other American officials for allegedly putting him on the USs no-fly list a roster of suspected terrorists barred from taking commercial flights to pressure him to collaborate. When that failed, the lawsuit said, the FBI had him arrested, interrogated and tortured for 106 days in the United Arab Emirates. As shocking as the claims are, they are not the first to emanate from worshippers at Fikres mosque in Portland, where at least nine members have been barred from flying by the US authorities. The no-fly list gives the FBI an extrajudicial tool to coerce Muslims to become informants, said Gadeir Abbas, a lawyer who represents other clients on the list. Theres definitely a cluster of cases like this at the FBIs Portland office. Fikre has not been charged with any terrorism related crimes or even questioned as a potential threat on his return to the US. He remains on the no-fly list.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing articles about questionable intelligence agency practices from reliable sources.
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