WASHINGTON, June 6: A report released this week by the US Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) confirms many of Amnesty International’s findings, that hundreds of non-nationals picked up in the post-Sept 11 sweeps in the USA, were deprived of basic human rights. Most of those detained were Muslim males of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin.

An Amnesty International press release says the 198-page OIG report focuses on the cases of 762 aliens detained for immigration violations as part of the FBI’s initial investigations into the 9/11 attacks, most of whom have since been deported. None was charged in connection with terrorism. While it recognized the challenges faced by the justice department in responding to the attacks, the OIG found “significant problems” in the way detainees were treated.

Their findings included the following:

— Many detainees were denied prompt access to lawyers or relatives. There were also routine delays in charging detainees with any offence; some were held without charge, or without receiving notice of immigration charges, for more than a month after being arrested.

— An information “blackout” meant that many detainees remained initially in high security units without their relatives or lawyers being informed of their whereabouts. In some instances the authorities denied holding the detainees during that period.

— The FBI took an average of 80 days (and in some cases much longer) to “clear” detainees for release or removal by the immigration authorities, leaving them to languish for months in detention centres despite having no connection with terrorism.

— The report was critical of the unduly harsh conditions in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New York, where 84 detainees were kept in “lockdown” for 23 hours a day with restrictions on visits and phone calls and were shackled with “handcuffs, leg irons and heavy chains” every time they left their cells.