Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was acquitted of terrorism-related charges last year, filed a lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging his prolonged unlawful detention and inhumane treatment by the United States. Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School.
In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States, where he spent almost 10 years in solitary confinement while in pretrial detention. After being cleared of all charges by a federal jury in July 2023, the U.S. immediately transferred him to immigration detention and wrongly treated him as an applicant for admission awaiting deportation.
In fact, it was the United States that brought Mr. Trabelsi to this country against his will for prosecution over a decade ago. The Belgian government has so far issued two formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return to Belgium, but the U.S. has refused. Instead, the government has indicated that it intends to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born, but where he is likely to face torture.
The lawsuit challenges the government's authority to detain Mr. Trabelsi, arguing that his detention violates the U.S.-Belgium Extradition Treaty, U.S. immigration law, and the Constitution, and that the U.S. government must facilitate his return to Belgium. It also seeks immediate improvements to Mr. Trabelsi's detention conditions.
“Mr. Trabelsi’s inhumane treatment in immigration detention is just the latest in a long string of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s violation of both the law and its own policies,” said Sophia Gregg, senior immigrants’ rights attorney at ACLU of Virginia. “ICE must be held accountable, and Mr. Trabelsi must be afforded the right to return to Belgium as the law requires.”
