San Francisco, CA -- A San Francisco man filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. Department of State in federal court today after the U.S. Embassy in Sana'a, Yemen revoked his U.S. passport. He was left stranded in Yemen away from his home and family for 14 months at a time when the State Department urged Americans to leave the country.
"It was the worst day of my life," said Plaintiff Mosed Omar, a 63-year-old San Francisco resident and U.S. citizen. "When the Embassy took away my passport, they took away my hope. I worked for 40 years to build my life in America. That day I thought my life was over. I had no way to go back home to my family."
Mr. Omar traveled to his hometown of Sana'a, Yemen to help his youngest daughter obtain a U.S. passport. In January 2013, Embassy officials took his own passport after holding him at the Embassy for 8 hours. Without food, water, or medicine, Mr. Omar, a diabetic with high blood pressure, begged to leave, saying he would do anything to get his passport back. Embassy personnel then told him to sign a statement without explaining its contents to him. When Mr. Omar complied, the Embassy refused to return his passport and he was left to fend for himself in a country the State Department said was too dangerous for American citizens.
"An Embassy is supposed to be a place of refuge for a citizen traveling abroad. But Yemeni-Americans find the opposite," said Yaman Salahi, a lawyer at the Asian Law Caucus representing Mr. Omar. "Many people are stuck in Yemen in a warzone not because they ignored travel warnings, but because the Embassy turned its back on them. Some were subjected to shocking and illegal treatment like full-day interrogations, forced confessions, passport confiscation, and unreasonable bureaucratic hurdles."
A year later, Mr. Omar was given a one-way travel document back to the United States. He also learned the statement he signed purports to confess his name is "false"-even though he signed the purported confession with the same "false" name. After an administrative hearing that lawyers have criticized as procedurally unfair, the State Department refused to return Mr. Omar's U.S. passport based on the bizarre "false name" accusation.
The complaint asserts that the State Department had no legal basis to revoke Mr. Omar's passport. "If accusations of a 'false name' are a roundabout way of suggesting someone did not follow the rules decades ago when becoming a citizen, the government has to make that case to a judge in a fair hearing, and give that individual a full and fair opportunity to respond before it strips him of a right of citizenship," said Wendy Feng, an attorney from Covington & Burling representing Mr. Omar pro bono. "The State Department cannot make such a determination unilaterally."
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to order the Department to return Mr. Omar's passport, and to declare the State Department's use of involuntary confessions and the revocation of passports in these circumstances to be illegal.
