PORTLAND, Ore., May 31 (UPI) -- A former Oregon businessman is suing the U.S. government and two FBI agents he says had him tortured in the Middle East after he refused to become an informant.
Yonas Fikre, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Eritrean descent, says the agents were present when he was imprisoned and tortured in the Gulf nation for 106 days, The Oregonian reported Thursday.
Fikre, 33, claims the agents, Jason Dundas and David Noordeloos, became angry with him during a 2010 interrogation in Sudan when he refused to become an informant at a mosque he attended in Portland.
The suit claims the FBI put him on a no-fly list, preventing him from returning to Portland. The agents appeared to be present when UAE police blindfolded him and interrogated him, asking some of the same questions the FBI agents had, the suit claims.
Fikre claims UAE police repeatedly beat him with batons, forced him to sleep nearly naked on a cold floor and threatened to strangle him.
Thomas H. Nelson, his Oregon attorney, says in the suit the U.S. actions "effectively rendered him stateless."
The lawsuit seeks $5 million from each of the agents. It also names as defendants FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorism Screening Center.
Fikre now lives in Sweden.
