“Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion,
refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or
deporting them in the dead of night.”
A lawsuit from former detainees reveals the unjust and brutal nature
of immigrant round-ups after 9/11 in NYC. The federal lawsuit, filed by
6 men who were detained shortly after 9/11, charges 31 officials, including John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III,
the director of the F.B.I. The 6 men were beaten by guards from
the moment they were taken to a detention center, faced daily verbal
abuse aimed at their religion, and had virtually no access to legal
recourse. They had no connection to terrorism, but were
nonetheless held for months without charges and then deported.
They have been allowed to come back to the US for 12 days to testify in
their lawsuit, but will be kept in the custody of federal marshals the
whole time.
Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the
Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the Ibrahim
brothers, said “The post-9/11 domestic immigration sweeps were the first example of
the Bush administration’s willingness to ignore the law and hold people
outside the judicial system. The kind of torture, interrogation and arbitrary detention
that we now associate with Guantánamo and secret C.I.A. facilities
really started right here, in Brooklyn.”
The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
(source: “Held in 9/11 Net, Muslims Return to Accuse US”, NY Times, 1/23)