RIGHTS-US:
Damning Report on Post-9/11 Roundup Could Spur Suits

Jim Lobe and Kathrin Dauenhauer

A human rights group says it is considering legal action on behalf of immigrants rounded up following the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks after a Justice Department report found serious abuses in the way they were treated.
   The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the findings in the 198-page report released Monday by the Department's Inspector General (IG) Glenn Fine, a "major scandal for the Bush administration".

WASHINGTON, Jun 3 (IPS) - A human rights group says it is considering legal action on behalf of immigrants rounded up following the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks after a Justice Department report found serious abuses in the way they were treated.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the findings in the 198-page report released Monday by the Department's Inspector General (IG) Glenn Fine, a "major scandal for the Bush administration".

"We are actively assessing claims that should be brought in light of this report," said Lucas Guttentag, director of ACLU's immigrants rights project in a statement. He noted that Department officials named in the findings -- including high-ranking political appointees -- have been encouraged to obtain legal counsel to defend against any litigation arising from information disclosed in the report.

The report confirms ACLU's long-held view that the rights of the mostly Muslim, South Asian or Arabic-looking immigrants were trampled, added ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. "Immigrants weren't the enemy, but the war on terror quickly became a war on immigrants.''

Other rights groups also hailed the report.

"The report is a superb expose of how the Justice Department circumvented people's basic rights after September 11," said Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director for New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Both organisations urged the administration to take immediate action to remedy the violations detailed in the report.

The IG criticised the length and what he called "unduly harsh" conditions of confinement of the more than 750 people held in Brooklyn and New Jersey in the wake of the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"While our review recognised the enormous challenges and difficult circumstances confronting the Department in responding to the terrorist attacks, we found significant problems in the way the detainees were handled," it said. That included prolonged detention without charges, denial of access to legal counsel and family members, shackling of detainees and their physical and verbal abuse of detainees by guards and round-the-clock illumination of their cells.

The report also noted that the IG's investigation was hampered by the destruction of hundreds of prison videotapes that allegedly documented the harsh conditions and specific abuses to which the detainees were subject.

The Justice Department detained more than 1,200 non-citizens, primarily from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African countries after the 9/11 attacks. In some 766 cases, it used minor violations of immigration regulations as a pretext to hold the immigrants while it investigated their possible links to terrorism.

While it is unknown precisely how many have been charged with any terrorism-related crimes, Human Rights Watch, which has issued a series of reports on the fate of the detained, called the number "no more than a handful".

The Department has since deported some 505 of the detainees after hearings that were closed to the press and public, according to department officials.

The report also criticised the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is under the Justice Department, for the "indiscriminate and haphazard manner" in which immigrants "who had no connection to terrorism" were labelled as possible suspects, in part because an insufficient number of agents were assigned to review specific cases. Clearance took an average of 80 days and in some instances more than 200 days, it adds.

"Even in the chaotic aftermath of the Sep. 11 attacks, we believe the FBI should have taken more care to distinguish between aliens who it actually suspected of having a connection to terrorism from those aliens who, while possibly guilty of violating federal immigration law, had no connection to terrorism," the report said.

"This detain-first, ask-questions-later approach resulted in unjust treatment of detainees and tied the bureaucracy up in knots," according to Elisa Massimino, director of the Washington office of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR). "It is not an effective way to combat terrorism."

While not disputing any of the report's findings, Department officials Wednesday were unrepentant. "The Justice Department believes that the Inspector General's report is fully consistent with what courts have ruled over and over -- that our actions are fully within the law and necessary to protect the American people," said Barbara Comstock, the Department's director of public affairs.

"We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks."

The report, she said, "clearly recognises the Department was operating under the most difficult circumstances. Under these unprecedented and extraordinary circumstances, the law was scrupulously followed and respected while aggressively protecting innocent Americans from another terrorist attack."

That view was strongly challenged by the ACLU, which stressed that "conspiring to violate someone's civil rights is a crime, and we must leave no stone unturned in this investigation". The agency noted in particular that Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, who played a leading role in orchestrating the Department's actions, had explicitly urged immigration officials to "hold these people until we find out what's going on," despite the fact that many had been swept up and detained on minor immigration charges.

It also noted that prisoner officials were told by the Justice Department, "don't be in a hurry" to assist immigrants in finding attorneys or contacting their consulates for assistance.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also rejected the Department's defence, charging that the detention had been made on the basis of religion and ethnicity. "The report confirms the concern we had and exposes the roundup as an attack on innocent people," a spokesman said. "The detainees were not treated as illegal aliens but as potential terrorists."

The report's release had actually been held up for almost a year as a result of negotiations between Attorney General John Ashcroft's office and the IG over how to apportion blame, according to the ACLU, which said the report's findings were consistent with interviews it had been able to carry out with detainees.

"Most of the detainees we interviewed in prison felt confused and surprised at their treatment by a country committed to human liberty," Romero said. (END)