By Richard Serrano
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Stories are emerging from the nation’s jails of assaults and other abuse directed against some of the 700 people detained as a result of the federal investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
In Mississippi, a 20-year-old student from Pakistan said he was stripped and beaten in his cell by other inmates while jail guards failed to intervene and denied him proper medical care. The FBI is investigating the incident.
In New York, the Israeli consulate is concerned about five Israeli men who say they were blindfolded, handcuffed in their cells and forced to take lie detector tests.
In three Midwestern states, U.S. immigration officials cut off all visits and phone calls for detainees for a full week after the attacks, a directive that officials now say was mishandled.
And in Texas, a man from Saudi Arabia initially was denied an attorney and was deprived of a mattress, a blanket, a drinking cup and a clock to tell him when to recite his Muslim prayers, his lawyer said.
It appears unlikely that any of these detainees played a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Their attorneys say none of them is being held as a material witnesses; two have been released. Officials have said that of the 700, only a few have links to the terrorism investigation. The vast majority were swept up on immigration violations or state and local charges.
Judges are denying bond, closing hearings and sealing documents. Prosecutors are refusing to divulge what is occurring behind closed doors in jails and courtrooms.
Civil liberties groups are increasingly concerned and worry also about even more enhanced law enforcement authority in a new anti-terrorism bill approved by Congress last week.
Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Washington, D.C. appears to be "overreaching" its authority. Hussein Sadruddin, head of a Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Dallas, said that detainees are being targeted because they are Middle Easterners.
But Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller insist there has been no disregard for the rights of detainees.
Mueller said detained individuals fall into one of three categories: they might have some involvement in or information about the attacks, they might have violated immigration laws or they are wanted on state or local warrants.
"We do not detain persons (just for) questioning," he said.
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