November 30, 2003	Sunday	Shawwal 5, 1424

BATAVIA (New York): Benamar Benatta sits in a whitewashed cell, lost in a post-Sept 11 world.

Jailed the night of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Algerian air force lieutenant with an expired visa has spent the past 26 months in federal prisons, much of that time in solitary confinement - even though the FBI formally concluded in November 2001 that he had no connection to terrorism.

Since the government first took Benatta into custody, the United States has apprehended and released about 760 domestic detainees. More than 80 prisoners have been released from the military jail where alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It appears that no detainee has been locked up as long as Benatta, although it’s impossible to know because of secrecy surrounding some material witnesses who may still be in government custody.

He remains behind bars, awaiting a deportation hearing, unable to post a $25,000 bond.

“Two years ago, I had hopes. I was OK,” said Benatta, 29, a pale, handsome man who wore loose-fitting orange prison pyjamas and spoke slightly French-accented English during a two-hour interview at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility. “Now I lie in my cell and think: ‘What has become of me?’ “

Benatta was among the 1,200 or so men detained by US law enforcement agents in the frenzied weeks after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He had a most unfortunate resume: He was an Algerian and a Muslim and an avionics technician, and - like most of the others - he lacked proper immigration papers.

The Canadians had held Benatta since he arrived at the Peace Bridge crossing near Buffalo and applied for asylum the previous week. They turned him over to federal agents. A few days later, prosecutors sent him south to New York City, where he was placed in solitary confinement.

It was as though Benatta became invisible. His name never appeared on lists of detainees. His family in Algeria believed he’d vanished. No defence attorney knew of his existence until a federal defender in Buffalo was assigned his case in late April 2002.

The federal government has few explanations for what happened. In legal briefs, the US attorney in Buffalo blamed some of the delays on bureaucratic wrangling between prosecutors and the US Marshals Service, and the confusion that followed the terrorist attacks. But in the documents, US Attorney Michael Battle of the Western District of New York ultimately acknowledged that such conditions could “not justify violating the defendant’s rights”.

Two years after the attacks, federal Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr would examine Benatta’s case and find a study in governmental excess.

Schroeder issued an unsparing report in September, writing that federal prosecutors and FBI and immigration agents engaged in a “sham” to make it appear that Benatta was being held for immigration violations. Prosecutors trampled on legal deadlines intended to protect his constitutional rights and later offered explanations for their manoeuvres that “bordered on ridiculousness,” Schroeder wrote. And he found that the government compounded its mistakes by failing to act once it was clear that Benatta was not an accomplice to terrorists.

“The defendant in this case undeniably was deprived of his liberty,” Schroeder wrote, “and held in custody under harsh conditions which can be said to be oppressive.” To keep Benatta imprisoned any longer, the magistrate concluded, “would be to join in the charade that has been perpetrated.”

Battle filed papers in October objecting to Schroeder’s “harsh” criticism of his prosecutors, several of whom were identified by name.

Soon after, however, Battle accepted Schroeder’s report and dropped the two criminal charges alleging that Benatta possessed false identification papers.

Battle, through a spokesman, turned down a request for an interview. A former federal prosecutor criticized by Schroeder also declined comment, as did a Justice Department spokesman in Washington. A spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which assumed parts of the former INS, noted only that Benatta now faces a “removal hearing”.

Critics have long contended that the government crackdown infringed on the civil rights of some detainees.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.