The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit against top U.S. government officials on behalf of the family of an American citizen detained indefinitely in Iraq for nearly two months without charge or access to his family or a lawyer, demanding that the man be released and returned to his home in Los Angeles.
The relatives of Cyrus Kar, a 44-year-old part time college professor who had been in Iraq filming a historical documentary, charge that Kar has been unjustly held since May 17 despite the fact that the family has received assurances from the FBI that Kar has been cleared of any wrongdoing. Kar's American relatives filed the lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. today along with international law specialist and former Chair of Amnesty International USA Paul Hoffman and Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky against President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey.
"From the moment we heard Cyrus was in U.S. custody, we have been frantically trying to contact every government agency we can," said Shahrzad Folger, Kar's first cousin. "No one has been able to confirm where he is or why he's there. We don't understand why they won't let him come home, especially since the government said he hasn't done anything wrong."
Kar grew up along the West Coast after emigrating from Iran as a child. He served in the Navy for three years before earning a bachelor's degree from San Jose State University and a master's degree from Pepperdine University. For the past three years, he had been working on a historical documentary and manuscript about the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Kar and his cameraman Farshid Faraji had traveled to Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and collected dozens of hours of film. Kar lacked critical footage of Babylon and entered Iraq only after securing appropriate permits and visas from the U.S. and Iraqi governments and from Kurdish authorities. After Kar missed his return flight to Los Angeles, his relatives confirmed that Kar was detained by Iraqi police and turned over to U.S. forces while in Iraq.
"I am terrified for Cyrus and his cameraman. I'm worried about my sister's health - none of us can eat or sleep knowing he is being detained," said Kar's aunt Parvin Modarress, who has had just three short phone conversations with Kar since May. "He was so passionate about his film and that's all he was doing in Iraq, the government must let him go."
According to his relatives, the FBI has cleared Kar of any suspicions and said it was "doing [its] best to bring Cyrus home." After searching his Los Angeles apartment and administering a lie detector test to Kar, the FBI asserted it "knew Cyrus better than Cyrus" and an FBI agent stated the military "just needs to cross all their t's and dot all their i's" and that Kar's release was imminent. But after 50 days, Kar is still being detained in Iraq without charges.
"What has happened to Cyrus and his family belongs in a Kafka novel," said ACLU of Southern California Legal Director Mark Rosenbaum. "It is unacceptable that the U.S. military take an American and detain him indefinitely, for no reason without access to his family or to a lawyer. This administration is trashing the Constitution in the name of national security and forcing us to ask how many more people are being held unjustly like Cyrus."
Added Legal Director of the national ACLU Steven R. Shapiro: "The right to be free from arbitrary detention is a core American freedom. The Supreme Court has clearly said that it is unconstitutional for the U.S. military to hold an American citizen without allowing him to challenge that detention."
The lawsuit charges that Kar's detention violates his constitutional rights, federal law, international law and the regulations of the U.S. Military.
Attorneys in the case are Hoffman and Chemerinsky; Rosenbaum, Ahilan Arulanantham and Ranjana Natarajan of the ACLU of Southern California; Shapiro and Ben Wizner of the national ACLU; Lucas Guttentag and Lee Gelernt of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project; and Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital Area.

LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California today expressed great concern that the Bush administration will replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who announced her retirement today after more than two decades on the court, with a nominee whose judicial philosophy is fundamentally opposed to the progress made in protecting individual rights over the past century.

"Justice O'Connor's legacy will be of a conscientious judge who, as a centrist and a conservative, at certain critical junctures, resisted extremist ideology on the Court that would have stripped the constitution of its sensitivity to such core values as protection against gender and racial discrimination and subordinated the rights of the individual to the power of the executive. We are gravely concerned that President Bush will use this opportunity to nominate someone whose judicial philosophy is hostile to civil liberties," said ACLU/SC Legal Director Mark Rosenbaum. O'Connor wrote the majority opinion in Rosenbaum's first case before the Supreme Court (Kolender v. Lawson), supporting the constitutional rights of a Los Angeles man repeatedly stopped by police.

As a matter of policy, the ACLU will only oppose nominees to the Supreme Court that are fundamentally hostile to civil liberties and will do so upon a vote of the board of directors. The national board of the ACLU has voted to oppose only two nominees in its history: Justice William Rehnquist and former solicitor general and law professor Robert Bork.

Although her record on the court is mixed on civil liberties, Justice O'Connor has provided the crucial fifth vote in a number of cases implicating core civil liberties. For instance, she wrote the opinion upholding equal opportunity programs and the importance of diversity in college admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger. She often was instrumental in resisting attempts to undo many of this nation's most cherished rights such as a woman's right to choose.

She also wrote the opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, in which the court ruled that an American citizen seized overseas as an "enemy combatant" must be allowed to challenge the factual basis of his or her detention before an independent arbiter. Affirming the rule of law even during times of national crisis, O'Connor wrote: "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."

Although the majority opinion in Hamdi is far from perfect, it remains a strong rebuke of the Bush administration, which had argued for absolute power to detain American citizens seized overseas in military custody without charge, trial or access to counsel.

And in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, she broke with Chief Justice Rehnquist and other opponents of a woman's right to choose as part of a 6-3 majority in affirming Roe v. Wade.

"O'Connor's resignation and the nomination of her successor could directly affect the outcome of some of the most divisive legal questions facing America today," said ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston. "The rights of women, American detainees, death row inmates and all of us under the Patriot Act could be in jeopardy."

LOS ANGELES - The ACLU of California is calling on Gov. Schwarzenegger to take "immediate steps" to stop the California National Guard from spying on people who are engaged in peaceful protest following revelations that an intelligence unit recently spied on a rally organized by families of slain American soldiers. A California Public Records Act request was filed with both the Governor and the California National Guard seeking documents relating to the peace rally and the Intelligence Unit.

"We were shocked to learn that grandmothers protesting on Mother's Day were the target of a National Guard terrorist unit," said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. "We fear that the surveillance of the Mothers' Day peace rally is just the tip of the iceberg and we call on the Governor to take immediate action to put a stop to this illegal activity. The national guard should not be spying on families of slain Americans soldiers."

The Mothers' Day incident was revealed in the San Jose Mercury News - disclosing that a handful of peaceful, anti-war protestors at the Sacramento Capitol were spied on by a special intelligence unit of the National Guard. The May 8 rally was organized by Gold Star Families for Peace, Raging Grannies and Code Pink.

California affiliates of the ACLU, representing more than 90,000 members, are calling on the Governor immediately to take the following steps:

'Disband the National Guard's Intelligence Unit or impose strict regulations on the unit. Strict regulations include: prohibiting the monitoring and collection of information on individuals and organizations engaged in First Amendment protected activity; prohibiting dissemination of information already collected to other government agencies; creating clear guidelines and definitions that protest activity - including civil disobedience - is not terrorism; and regulation of file storage and data retention to ensure regular purging of any databases and storage systems.

'Under the California Public Records Act, release all information related to the May 8 incident and other incidents in which the National Guard has been used to monitor protected First Amendment activities. This includes all documents related to the anti-war protest held at the Capitol on Mothers' Day; to any anti-war demonstrations in the past year; all correspondence from members of the Intelligence Unit related to Code Pink, Gold Star Families for Peace, and/or Raging Grannies.