Terrorist Watch List Challenge to No-Fly Rule Re-instated

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A Stanford student who was arrested at San Francisco International Airport in 2005 before being allowed to fly to her native Malaysia can sue the U.S. government over her apparent inclusion on its no-fly list, which has kept her from re-entering the United States, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a lawsuit by Rahinah Ibrahim, who says she was mistakenly placed on a terrorist watch list – a list whose government overseers have acknowledged thousands of errors in the past decade.

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 the larger “selectee” list can fly but are subjected to additional searches.

Ibrahim’s status is unclear. When she arrived at an SFO ticket counter in January 2005, a clerk said he found her name on a no-fly list and called police, who – after contacting federal authorities – handcuffed her and held her in a cell at the airport for two hours.

She was released and allowed to fly the next day, with extra searches at each stop. But when she tried to return two months later, an airport agent in Kuala Lumpur turned her away and said she was subject to arrest. A month after that, the U.S. consulate said her student visa had been revoked under a terrorism law, an explanation that was repeated when she reapplied in 2009. Read more…

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