January 15, 2002	Tuesday	Shawwal 30, 1422

DUBAI, Jan 14: Allegations that American law enforcement officers are harassing Saudi nationals, sometimes violently, in the hunt for the Sept 11 plotters are causing a mounting outcry in Saudi Arabia.

Hundreds of Saudis have been hauled in by US authorities as part of the investigation into the suicide hijack attacks.

And some Saudis returning home from the United States are going public with angry complaints that could ruffle US relations with the oil superpower, whose leaders are torn between their own support for the US campaign and popular sympathy for Muslim fighters.

One case involves the student son of one of Saudi Arabia’s prominent families. Mohammed said his fiancee and other relatives were abused after US officials had mistaken him for Mohamed Atta — the suspected leader of the hijackers.

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” said Mohammed — he asked that his precise surname not be used for fear of jeopardising his return to complete his degree but it is similar to Atta’s. “They thought I was Mohamed Atta,” he said.

Jonathan Shapiro, the family’s Boston-based lawyer, said the treatment of his clients was “one of the worst incidents in terms of the abuse of civil rights by the government”.

“They were pretty outrageously abused by the authorities,” Shapiro said.

Mohammed recounted his fiancee’s ordeal in a Boston hotel on September 12, the day after the attacks: “She opened the door to get the paper and a man in a civilian suit pointed a gun at her head, dragged her and hit her in the face with handcuffs.”

Her sister-in-law and brother were forced to the ground and handcuffed, the former kicked in the head, he said. Mohammed said US agents “demanded an immediate confession” from his fiancee, who has since become his wife.

While he was at a lecture in another state, his family was detained for six hours in the hotel. Mohammed himself had stayed there some days earlier. “I don’t want to anger the United States...But I want to explain what happened,” he said.

FRUSTRATION: The US Justice Department declined comment.

A US law enforcement official said any allegations of abuse would be investigated: “But the question has to be asked: when they were taken into custody, did they resist in any way.”

Saudi Arabia has received over 200 inquiries from families about relatives held in the United States since Sept 11.

The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said US authorities have freed 12 Saudis held after the attacks. Most had been detained for allegedly violating immigration or traffic laws or other minor offences.

TRAINEE PILOT: “The way my brother Zuhair and his wife were arrested was brutal and barbaric,” Khaled al-Qahtani told Reuters. They were handcuffed and his sister-in-law stripped of her veil, he said.

Qahtani said the couple was arrested on suspicion of staying illegally in Florida, where his 31-year-old brother had been at a pilot training school for 16 months. He insisted their US papers were valid. Some of the hijackers who attacked New York and Washington are alleged to have learned to fly in Florida.

The couple was freed without charge after 52 days detention and have returned to the kingdom, said Qahtani. He said his brother was in a “bad psychological state after being humiliated in the interrogation” but hoped to return to the United States.—Reuters