Washington, March 01: Al-Kidd said he has two main goals: personal vindication and “to insure this doesn’t happen to other people.” Now teaching English at a university in Saudi Arabia, al-Kidd sat for an interview shortly after returning to the United States this month to see his two children and other relatives.
The government’s interest in al-Kidd appears to have stemmed from a trip he made to Yemen after Sept. 11 and his ties to a man the Justice Department prosecuted on computer terrorism charges. That defendant, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was a graduate student at the University of Idaho, where al-Kidd played running back for the college football team in the 1990s.
Al-Kidd said he met with FBI agents several times and answered all their questions. He said he was never told he might be called as a witness, never told not to travel or asked to voluntarily turn over his passport, as the FBI did with another potential witness in the same investigation.
Early in 2003, he was planning to go to Saudi Arabia on a scholarship to study Arabic and Islamic law. Days before he left — some six months after his last contact with federal authorities — the FBI persuaded a judge in Idaho to sign a material witness warrant authorizing his arrest. Agents picked him up at Dulles two days later.
But the sworn statement the FBI submitted to justify the warrant had important errors and omissions. The $5,000 one-way, first-class seat that the agents said al-Kidd purchased was, in reality, a coach-class, round-trip ticket. The statement neglected to mention that al-Kidd had been cooperative or that he was a U.S. citizen with a wife and children who also were American.
Claims against the FBI agents are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. Al-Kidd has separately reached settlements with Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho jail officials over his treatment. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled the strip searches al-Kidd endured at the federal jail in Oklahoma City “were objectively unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment.”
When al-Kidd was brought before a federal judge in Idaho, more than two weeks after his arrest, he was released from custody, but under very strict conditions.
Recently married for a second time, he could only travel in four Western states and was required to live with his new in-laws in Las Vegas. “It was pretty stressful,” he said. “In their defense, they probably want the best for their daughter, and even if this guy didn’t do anything wrong, he’s damaged goods at this point.”
His marriage quickly deteriorated and relations were so tense at home that the court allowed him to find his own place.
Al-Kidd found a job delivering supplies to a store on Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas, but was told after eight or nine months that security officials would no longer allow him on the base.
Even after al-Hussayen was acquitted on the most serious charges, the government took no action to end restrictions on al-Kidd. But he persuaded a judge to end them.
Nine months later, Al-Kidd filed his suit, which he hopes will finally to clear his name. “I haven’t lost faith in the system,” he said.
–Agencies