US: Daesh bride's family files lawsuit against Trump

By Umar Farooq

WASHINGTON

The father of an American woman who fled her home in the state of Alabama to join the Daesh terrorist group is filing a lawsuit against U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to get her returned to America.

The legal team representing Ahmed Ali Muthana, a former Yemeni diplomat at the U.N., argue remarks by Trump and his administration that said Hoda Muthana, 24, is not a U.S. citizen, subsequently barring her from re-entry, are unconstitutional.

"The failure of the United States to facilitate the return of Ms. Muthana and her son as it is obligated to do under the Constitution and the Fourth Geneva Convention will cause immediate and irreparable harm by jeopardizing their ability in the future to return to the United States," the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America said in a lawsuit filed late Thursday.

Trump said Wednesday in a tweet he told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to not let Muthana and her 18-month-old son into the country. Pompeo called her a "terrorist" and said that she had no legal basis to enter the country.

The question of Muthana's citizenship is in murky waters, due to the fact that her father had served as a diplomat prior to her birth.

A person born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats is not automatically considered a citizen.

However, her attorneys argue Trump and Pompeo are inaccurate, saying that her U.S. birth qualifies her as a citizen.

Hassan Shibly, Muthana's lawyer, provided Anadolu Agency with a photo of her birth certificate showing she was born in New Jersey as well as a 2004 letter from the U.S. mission to the UN, saying her father was no longer a diplomat Sept.1, before she was born.

When applying for her passport, Muthana's father sent the UN letter to immigration authorities and they accepted the documentation and issued her a passport in 2005, and then renewed it in 2014.

In 2016, under President Barack Obama, a letter addressed to Muthana and sent by the U.S. to her family in Alabama tried to revoke her passport while she was still in Syria. That contradicted the Vienna Conventions of Diplomatic Relations, which says a person's diplomatic immunity ends when a post ends, according to the lawsuit.

The State Department, however, says it was not officially notified of the termination until Feb. 6, 1995, after Muthana's birth.

Shibly told Anadolu Agency this week that Muthana is extremely remorseful for her ignorance and arrogance, and that she had been brainwashed. The attorney says that she wants to help speak out against radicalization, is willing to face trial in the U.S. and is aware she would likely be charged and placed in jail.

"One of the things Hoda really wants to do is to be able to speak out and protect others from those very same mistakes," he said.