WASHINGTON, July 22: The US Justice Department is conducting 14 investigations into alleged abuses and mistreatment of post-Sept 11 detainees, including a charge that a guard used a Muslim inmate’s shirt to polish his shoes, according to a new government report.
The cases, detailed on Monday by the department’s inspector general, range from accusations of use of excessive force, verbal abuse, religious insensitivities to illegal searches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
But the investigated cases represent only a tiny fraction of the total number of 1,073 civil rights complaints received by US authorities from people imprisoned under the Patriot Act adopted in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, according to the document made public Monday.
The measure gives law enforcement authorities unprecedented surveillance and detention powers designed to help the government ferret out possible terrorist infiltrators.
A total of 762 foreigners were seized and held in the United States in the 11 months following the attacks as part of a crackdown on terrorism suspects, said justice officials.
However, the inspector general deemed only 34 of the complaints “credible,” according to the report, which doesn’t mention any names or locations.
Under investigation are allegations by approximately 20 inmates that a prison guard verbally abused a Muslim inmate and ordered him to remove his shirt so the officer could use it to shine his shoes.
Also being probed is a charge by an unnamed Egyptian national arrested by the FBI immediately following the Sept 11 attacks who insists he was submitted to multiple and repeated body cavity searches, denied access to counsel and the Egyptian consulate and forced to consume food prohibited by the Holy Quran.
Several FBI agents are being probed following allegations they conducted an illegal search of an Arab-American’s apartment, vandalized it, stole items, called the complainant a terrorist and later, having failed to find any evidence of his terrorist connections, tried to frame him on drug charges, according to the report.
An immigration officer is accused of holding a loaded gun to an alien detainee’s head, while a prison doctor allegedly told a Muslim patient: “If I was in charge, I would execute every one of you ... because of the crimes you all did.”
And the newly created Department of Homeland Security is investigating an employee accused of mistreating a Muslim visitor by asking him in front of others if he “wanted to kill Christians and Jews”.
The release of the report coincided with a lawsuit filed by FBI special agent Bassem Youssef, an American of Egyptian descent, who claims his career has been stymied due to anti-Arab bias at the bureau.
In addition to compensation, Youssef is demanding that FBI Director Robert Mueller issue an order explicitly banning bureau employees from calling Arabs “rag heads”, “camel jockeys” and “sand monkeys”, epithets that the plaintiff insists can be heard in the halls of the FBI.
Democratic Congressman John Conyers said the investigations were proof of further erosion of civil liberties in the United States as a result of the “war on terror”.
“This report shows there are more victims of John Ashcroft’s war on the constitution,” said the lawmaker, referring to the attorney general. “Will the Justice Department ever admit that it has gone too far?”
Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the findings “disturbing”.
The American Civil Liberties Union, for its part, expressed concerns that so few of the complaints had led to formal investigations.
“What remains most disturbing is the tendency of the Justice Department to minimize and downplay what were serious civil liberties and civil rights violations,” said Laura Murphy, head of the ACLU Washington office. —AFP