Mansouri v. United States Government

• Court: District Court, District of Columbia
• Decided: December 1, 2025
• Docket: Civil Action No. 2025-3946
• Status: Published

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

AMINE MANSOURI, ) ) Plaintiff, ) ) v. ) Civil Action No. 25-03946 (UNA) ) UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT et al., ) ) Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Plaintiff, appearing pro se, has filed a complaint and an application to proceed in forma

pauperis (IFP). For the following reasons, the Court grants the IFP application and dismisses the

complaint. 1

Plaintiff, a resident of Kasserine, Tunisia, alleges that “[b]eginning around 2012 and

continuing to present,” Plaintiff has been the “victim of a systematic, extraterritorial, and violent

persecution” orchestrated by the United States government. Specifically, Plaintiff is “subject to a

campaign of relentless surveillance and physical harm facilitated by U.S. military satellites [and]

executed with military-grade equipment and satellite technology[.]” Compl., ECF No. 1 at 4-5.

As a result, Plaintiff has endured “continuous mental and physical torture” that has forced Plaintiff

“to seek safety by fleeing from one city to another and, finally, leaving the United States[.]” Id. at

5. “Yet, the perpetrators have tracked [Plaintiff] relentlessly . . . from San Francisco to New York,

then to Florida, and even across international borders to Tunisia.” Id. Plaintiff asserts that the

1 Plaintiff’s Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 3, will be denied as moot. See American Foreign Service Association v. Trump, 766 F. Supp. 3d 25, 28 (D.D.C. 2025) (“To obtain a TRO, the moving party must show, among other factors, “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits”) (cleaned up)). alleged misconduct “constitute[s] a grave violation” of “the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

Act (MEJA) and other relevant statutes.” Id.

MEJA is a criminal statute applicable to “Criminal offenses committed by certain members

of the Armed Forces and by persons employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces outside the

United States.” 18 U.S.C. § 3261. Plaintiff has not cited a provision under the Act that creates “a

concomitant civil remedy,” and a “bare criminal statute . . . is insufficient to imply” that Congress

intended one. Lee v. United States Agency for International Development, 859 F.3d 74, 77-78

(D.C. Cir. 2017); see Adhikari v. Kellogg Brown & Root, Incorporated, 845 F.3d 184, 206 (5th Cir.

2017) (declining “to find that MEJA’s grant of criminal jurisdiction over felony offenses

committed abroad gives Plaintiffs an alternative jurisdictional basis for their civil claims”). What’s

more, Plaintiff’s factual allegations “rise to the level of the irrational or the wholly incredible.”

Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 33 (1992).

A complaint, as here, lacking “an arguable basis either in law or in fact,” Neitzke v.

Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989), and “postulating events and circumstances of a wholly

fanciful kind,” Crisafi v. Holland, 655 F.2d 1305, 1307-08 (D.C. Cir. 1981), is a frivolous action

properly dismissed under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i). A separate order accompanies this

Memorandum Opinion.

TREVOR N. McFADDEN Date: December 1, 2025 United States District Judge