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Advocates demand to know details on people held in terrorism arrests
12/06/2001
WASHINGTON – Demanding that the Bush administration lift the veil of
secrecy surrounding most arrests in the terrorism investigation, the
American Civil Liberties Union and 18 other organizations went to federal
court Wednesday in hopes of obtaining detailed information on detainees.
The groups, which include Amnesty International, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, and Human Rights Watch, filed suit in U.S.
District Court in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act. They
are seeking the names of the more than 1,100 people detained in
connection with the investigation, along with charges filed, length of
detention, place where the detainees are jailed, and names of their
lawyers.
"It is impossible for the public to assess whether or not the government
investigation into the crimes of September 11th has been reasonable and
effective if the government withholds all the basic information about
what it has been doing," said Hussein Ibish of the Arab-American
Anti-Discrimination Committee, one of the plaintiff groups.
Justice Department officials declined to comment on the lawsuit
Wednesday, citing the pending litigation.
While Attorney General John Ashcroft and other federal officials insist
that all constitutional and due process protections are being provided,
leaders of several organizations said they are troubled by reports of
detainees complaining of lack of access to attorneys, lengthy detentions
for minor violations, and abusive treatment.
"There is mounting evidence that secrecy is being invoked to shield
serious violations of individual rights and not for legitimate
investigative purposes," Kate Martin, director of the Center for
National Security Studies, said at a news conference where the lawsuit
was announced.
Her organization and 39 others petitioned the Justice Department, FBI,
and Immigration and Naturalization Service for the detainee information
more than five weeks ago. "Since filing our request on October 29th, we
have received no documents in response to any of our requests, even
though the Justice Department has recognized the law requires them to
give us an expedited answer," Ms. Martin said.
List of concerns
The federal government has released only a limited snapshot of the arrests, contending that to do more would violate detainees' privacy rights and could hamper the terrorism investigation.
The Justice Department last month stopped providing a daily total of all arrests made by federal, state, and local authorities in connection with the Sept. 11 investigation, halting the count at nearly 1,200. In the most recent update, provided Tuesday to Congress by Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, 608 people remained in federal custody – 553 for immigration violations and 55 on federal criminal charges. That figure does not include people held by state and local authorities, or those held on federal material witness warrants filed under seal.
Short on specifics
Required by law to release specific information on those criminally charged, the Justice Department has refused to make public specific information about the immigration detainees, most brought in on run-of-the-mill violations such as overstaying their visas.
Doing so would be "inappropriate," Mr. Ashcroft said at a recent news conference, citing a desire not to show the al-Qaeda network the progress of the U.S. investigation. He also cited privacy considerations, saying: "It's very possible that some individuals that we think might be terrorists might someday, by further investigation, be shown not to be terrorists."
Noting that federal officials themselves estimate that no more than 15 of the detainees are suspected of being terrorists, Ms. Martin and others at the ACLU news conference said the government would be lifting the cloud of suspicion from most by releasing their names and reason for their arrests. Mr. Ibish called the government's privacy argument "fatuous and disingenuous."
"In fact, it's not the privacy rights of these individuals which are threatened, it's their due process rights, it's their fundamental constitutional and human rights," he said.
No one held 'in secret'
Declining to comment Wednesday on the groups' charges, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker pointed to comments made previously by Justice Department officials.
During an appearance last week before the Judiciary Committee, a top Ashcroft deputy denied that any detainee's rights have been trampled.
"Nobody is held incommunicado. We don't hold people in secret, you know, cut off from lawyers, cut off from the public, cut off from their family and friends," Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff testified. "They have the right to communicate with the outside world. We don't stop them from doing that."
Detention conditions make it difficult to communicate with the outside world, one former detainee told a Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday. Ali Al-Maqtari, detained nearly eight weeks in a Tennessee jail cell before being released, said he was confined to his cell 23 hours a day and permitted one 15-minute phone call a week, either to his attorney or to a family member.