In response to the unprecedented and illegal detention of Tufts student and Fulbright scholar Rümeysa Öztürk, Free Speech For People and Somerville for Palestine have launched a joint petition calling for a criminal investigation into the kidnapping.
Öztürk is a Turkish citizen who has lived and studied in the United States on a valid student visa. One year ago, she co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts school newspaper that called upon the university to abide by undergraduate student Senate resolutions that sought to hold Israel accountable for international law violations against the Palestinian people by divesting from Israeli companies. This exercise of her First Amendment rights appears to be the sole reason plainclothes ICE officers unlawfully kidnapped her, after the DHS unlawfully stripped her of her visa that same day without notice.
She was secretly smuggled out of Massachusetts and sent to a detention facility in Louisiana where she has since been denied access to her attorneys and where her attorneys cannot verify the conditions of her confinement or whether she is receiving adequate medical care.
Free Speech For People sent a formal request to review the case, issued via a detailed letter this morning to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan. The undisputed facts provide a basis for undertaking an inquiry into whether President Donald Trump, senior Trump officials–including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem–and ICE agents conspired to kidnap Rümeysa Öztürk.
But we need your help.
Attorney General Campbell and Middlesex District Attorney Ryan need to know that the public will not stand for the egregious and illegal abduction of Öztürk.
