FRFI 166 April / May 2002
School children will one day read about the racist dragnet currently underway in the United States with the same shame and disgust with which we view the US government’s treatment of Japanese residents during World War Two. But that does little to help the victims. DALTON HILLIARD reports.
Cooked-up charges
Of the 1,200 Arabs and Muslims rounded up in the months after 11 September, at least 327 remain in custody. There may be more, but the US Justice Department has provided scant information, which includes neither the names of those held nor the place of detention. Most are kept in solitary confinement, without knowing the crime of which they are accused. Immigrant detainees have no right to court-appointed attorneys and most have been denied phone calls and visiting rights. In many cases, family members still do not know where or why their relatives have been detained.
‘I have now been in solitary confinement for three and a half months’, writes a detainee held in Metropolitan Detention Centre (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York. ‘By the time of the next hearing, I will have been here for four months. If it hadn’t been for the Koran and prayer, I would have lost my mind or had a nervous breakdown…Why am I imprisoned? Why in solitary confinement? And why under maximum security measures? I have many questions and no answers. What are they accusing me of? Nobody knows.’
An 0800 telephone number for immigration cases, which allows attorneys to punch in an ID number assigned to immigrant detainees, gives the message ‘case not found’ for post-11 September detainees.
Detainees in MDC accused of routine visa violations are confined to sealed, usually solitary, cells for 23-24 hours a day. The cells have a toilet and shower and detainees receive food through a slot in the door. Their sleep is disturbed by 24-hour lighting. They are supplied only with a sheet.
Of the 32 detainees at MDC whom the Justice Department allowed human rights groups to interview, 19 had no legal representation. Some had spent up to 112 days in detention without seeing anyone other than a government official. Many detainees reported they had made several attempts to get a lawyer, then had given up. Four of the 32 detainees interviewed at MDC reported that they had been on hungerstrike to protest about lack of access to counsel. US Attorney General John Ashcroft has reassured those who question these policies. ‘To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,’ said Ashcroft, ‘my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists.’
An unknown number of detainees have been deported without their families being informed. Of the foreign nationals issued with deportation orders, 87 are still detained in the US, pending ‘clearance checks’ by the Justice Department. Many have spent more than 130 days in gaol with no end in sight.
A Palestinian man arrested on 22 September 2001 for a visa violation was detained in Denton County Jail, Texas, in solitary confinement with only one hour of exercise a week in an enclosed yard. After more than two months in such conditions, he accepted voluntary departure from the USA to Jordan, where he was detained on arrival by the Jordanian authorities.
Palestinian university professor Mazen al-Najjar, released from prison last year after being held for over three years without charge, based on ‘secret evidence’, was re-arrested after 11 September. Despite having no criminal record, he is held in solitary confinement in a high security federal prison in Florida, locked in a cell 23 hours a day. He is denied visits from his family. As a stateless Palestinian with no country to return to, he could remain indefinitely in such conditions.
According to the wife of an Egyptian detainee at MDC, her husband has been held for more than six months in solitary confinement. In February his window was painted black and he lost his visiting rights – a punishment for failing to stand up when a guard came into his cell during prayer.
The majority of the 1,200 Arabs and Muslims arrested in the months following 11 September were picked up at traffic stops or because of the ‘suspicions’ of their neighbours.
Human Rights Watch has attempted to investigate the death in custody on 23 October of Pakistani citizen, Mohammed Butt, whose coroner’s report recorded ‘unspecified heart problems’. Citing ‘laws relating to privacy,’ the Immigration and Naturalisation Service has refused to provide information regarding Butt’s death, unless family members and human rights groups can produce a document with Butt’s signature indicating his consent to the release of information. Butt was never accused of a crime.
