Yonas Fikre, who claims he was detained and tortured at the behest of the US government, is shown here in a still image from a video recorded by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.Council on American-Islamic Relations
Earlier this week, I broke the story of Yonas Fikre, a 33-year-old Muslim American from Oregon who claims that he was detained and tortured in the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the US government. Fikre is now in Sweden, where he and his lawyers were scheduled to hold a press conference on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday, Portland’s Willamette Week and Oregonian published stories on Fikre’s ordeal. Oregon Public Broadcasting adds the detail that Fikre has applied for asylum in Sweden.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been helping Fikre, has given me a copy of a letter the group sent to Thomas Perez, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, describing Fikre’s ordeal, asking that Perez investigate “whether Mr. Fikre was detained and tortured at the behest of any agent of the U.S. government,” and demanding that he be allowed to return to the United States without “further unconstitutional interference.” You can read it here:
