A trial challenging the government's "No Fly" list began today in a San Francisco federal courtroom. Rahinah Ibrahim, a former Stanford University doctoral student, claims she was mistakenly placed on the list in 2005, and was denied boarding a Hawaii-bound plane from SFO in January of that year.
According to the Mercury News, Ibrahim, a Malaysian national wearing a traditional Muslim hijab, was headed to an academic conference in Kona with her 14-year-old-daughter:
Ibrahim's routine trip to the airport took a detour that day, sending her on a nearly nine-year odyssey through the American court system — and transforming an esteemed architectural scholar into a crusader against the U.S. government's secretive system of each year placing thousands of people, mostly foreigners, on "no-fly" lists targeting suspected terrorists.
Ibrahim has disavowed any terrorist connections, yet wound up on such a list. And she has been fighting to clear her name ever since.
Ibrahim sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Several similar lawsuits are currently pending; Ibrahim's is the first to go to trial.
The government has not publicly said why she was added to the list. Government lawyers have argued that a trial poses an unacceptable risk of revealing classified information. Ibrahim has not been allowed to enter the U.S. to testify; instead, her videotaped testimony is being shown to U.S. District Judge William Alsup.
"Dr. Ibrahim is a mother, she's a renowned scholar. She's a Stanford graduate," said Elizabeth Pipkin, Ibrahim's attorney, to KQED's Sara Hossaini. "And she's never been given any reason why she's been denied the right to travel."