SAN FRANCISCO, June 30: The American Muslim Alliance, a leading American Muslim political organization with 96 chapters in 34 US States, has criticized the US government for maltreating 132 Pakistanis who were detained incommunicado in various US jails, following the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and deported to Pakistan on June 27.
The AMA National chairman, Dr Agha Saeed, in an interview with the BBC on Saturday, said that his organization has twofold concern about the detention of Pakistanis. “First is dispensing with the principle of equality before law which is required by international law and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This included the violation of habeas corpus as many of these detainees were not produced before a judge. Secondly, most of them were not given the right to have a lawyer. In those cases, where the community arranged lawyers for a few of them, the confidentiality of the attorney-client discussions were not necessarily protected and people were treated in inhumane ways. Many of them were treated with racist contempt and religious bigotry.”
Alluding to the illegal stay of the deported Pakistanis in the US, Dr Saeed said that this does not deprive them of the due process. He added that there are millions of undocumented workers in this country but currently Pakistanis and Muslims in general are being subjected to selective application of law, against which direct legal remedy is not available because of the US Supreme Court decision — known as ADC V. Reno of April 1999 — in which the Court ruled that non-citizens have no constitutional protection against selective application of law.
The AMA chairman said the Pakistanis were kept incommunicado. How many are still in prison is anybody’s guess and the estimate ranges from 20 to 700.
According to the AMA statement: “We are deeply disturbed by what the recently-deported Pakistanis are saying about their treatment in various US prisons. As reported in Dawn some of them have alleged that while in prison they were “made to eat pork and were not allowed to say prayers” and that they were treated with racist contempt and religious bigotry by the prison staff and interrogating agencies.
