Civil Rights Group to Sue Over U.S. Handling of Muslim Men
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In a new challenge to the Bush administration’s prolonged detention of hundreds of Muslim men after Sept. 11, a civil rights group says it will ask a federal court to declare the government’s treatment of the men biased and unconstitutional. A class-action lawsuit prepared by the group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, accused the government of arbitrarily holding Muslim detainees in prison for months on minor immigration violations, with no hearings to determine whether the government had probable cause to hold them. They have also been subjected to excessively harsh treatment in jails in New Jersey and Brooklyn, the complaint said, and in some cases could not practice their religion, contact their families or seek the help of their consular officials. The lawsuit will be filed today in United States District Court in Brooklyn, said Barbara J. Olshansky, a lawyer for the center. ”We want the world to know that we are treating students, tourists, people here for short period of time, as criminals,” Ms. Olshansky said. ”We’re putting them into arbitrary detention, just like the worst totalitarian regimes we cry out all the time about in this country.” About 1,200 Muslim men were arrested in the first weeks after the terror attacks, most eventually charged with minor immigration violations such as overstaying a visa. As of mid-February, according to the only information provided by the Justice Department, 327 of the original detainees were still in custody on immigration charges. Government officials have declined to identify the detainees or the reasons so many remain in prison, other than to say that all law enforcement agencies must first clear them of links to terrorism. The suit names as defendants Attorney General John Ashcroft; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I.; James W. Ziglar, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service; Dennis Hasty, the warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn; and unnamed corrections officers at the detention center who are accused of beating and abusing some detainees. A Justice Department spokesman said the agency would not comment on the complaint. Efforts by civil rights groups and immigration lawyers to find out more about the detainees have been blocked by Mr. Ashcroft’s decision to hold hearings on the detainees behind closed doors. More : query.nytimes.com |