## Facts

- In June 1985, Fawaz Yunis and accomplices hijacked a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight departing Beirut using assault rifles and grenades, seized the cockpit, restrained air marshals, and held passengers (including two U.S. citizens) hostage.
- The hijackers demanded travel to Tunis to publicize political demands; after multiple diversions and refusals to land, the aircraft returned to Beirut.
- In Beirut, additional participants joined; the hijackers released passengers, held a press conference, destroyed the aircraft, and fled.
- A U.S. investigation identified Yunis as a leader; in September 1987 the FBI lured him onto a yacht in international waters, arrested him, interrogated him aboard U.S. Navy vessels, and transported him to Washington, D.C.
- Yunis was prosecuted in federal court for conspiracy, aircraft piracy, hostage taking, and related offenses; he admitted participation but claimed he acted under orders from the Amal Militia.
- A jury convicted him of conspiracy, aircraft piracy, and hostage taking, and acquitted him on certain violence/damage-related counts; the district court imposed concurrent sentences up to 30 years.

## Issues

1. Whether federal statutes validly conferred subject-matter jurisdiction over aircraft piracy and hostage taking committed largely abroad involving a foreign aircraft, where U.S. nationals were victims and the defendant was later brought to the United States.
2. Whether the defendant’s capture in international waters and transport to the United States required dismissal or other relief on due process or international-law grounds.
3. Whether U.S. Navy involvement in the arrest and transport violated the Posse Comitatus Act.
4. Whether limiting discovery of classified information and using substitutions under CIPA violated the defendant’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
5. Whether the jury instructions misstated the required mens rea or improperly framed the affirmative defense of obedience to military orders.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentences.
- The court held that the charged statutes reached Yunis’s conduct because U.S. nationals were among the victims and Yunis was found in the United States for prosecution.
- The court rejected due process and international-law challenges to Yunis’s seizure and transport, concluding government conduct did not bar prosecution.
- The court found no Posse Comitatus Act violation because the Navy provided support and transportation while civilian law enforcement led the operation.
- The court upheld the district court’s CIPA rulings, finding the withheld classified information was not sufficiently helpful to the defense to require disclosure.
- The court upheld the instructions on intent and the limited obedience-to-orders defense, finding no prejudicial error.

## Legal Principles

- Congress may authorize extraterritorial application of anti-terrorism statutes where U.S. nationals are harmed and the defendant is later present in U.S. custody for trial, consistent with recognized jurisdictional bases in international law.
- Under the Ker–Frisbie doctrine, irregularities in the manner of apprehension generally do not defeat a court’s jurisdiction; only conduct so outrageous as to bar use of the courts warrants dismissal on due process grounds.
- Military assistance that is logistical or transport support, with civilian authorities directing the law-enforcement mission, does not necessarily constitute unlawful military execution of domestic law under the Posse Comitatus Act.
- CIPA permits restricting disclosure of classified information when, after judicial review, the material is not relevant and helpful to the defense; substitutions may be used without violating confrontation or due process where the defense is not materially impaired.
- Hostage taking and aircraft piracy offenses require intent to perform the prohibited acts as defined by statute, not a heightened, extra-textual specific intent requirement.
- An obedience-to-orders defense may be limited to orders from a legitimate military organization and does not excuse manifestly unlawful acts; whether those predicates are met may be submitted to the jury under proper standards.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Yunis’s terrorism-related convictions, concluding that federal law properly reached the extraterritorial hijacking and hostage taking involving U.S. nationals, that Yunis’s overseas apprehension and Navy-supported transport did not bar prosecution, that CIPA limitations on classified discovery were constitutional where the information was not helpful to the defense, and that the jury was correctly instructed on mens rea and the narrow scope of any obedience-to-orders defense.


United States v. Yunis, 924 F.2d 1086 (D.C. Cir. 1991)