The Washington Post And Associated Press
WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, under increasing criticism for the Justice Department’s aggressive anti-terrorism measures, announced Tuesday that 603 people remain in federal custody in connection with the government’s investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, and said the detentions have been crucial to thwarting other plots.
According to the Justice Department, 548 unidentified people are detained on immigration charges. Another 104 face federal criminal charges, but authorities have only 55 of them in custody. An undisclosed number of people have been detained as material witnesses, Ashcroft said.
Although Ashcroft said some of the detainees are members of the al-Qaida terrorist network, none has been charged with direct complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, according to law enforcement officials.
The Justice Department did release the names of 93 of the 104 people who face criminal charges in connection with the Sept. 11 probe. They range from Mohamed Abdi – whose name was found in a car abandoned by hijackers at Dulles International Airport – to a group of 21 Iraqi nationals charged with fraudulently obtaining hazardous materials licenses in Pennsylvania. Officials have said the latter group has no connection to the Sept. 11 plot.
Most of the federal charges involve credit card fraud, possession of false documents and other crimes with no clear connection to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to records provided to Congress.
For instance, a Pakistani man who took video footage of the World Trade Center a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks was charged by agents in Wilmington, Del., with being an illegal immigrant who possessed firearms, the documents show.
A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms affidavit also alleged the Pakistani, Raza Nasir Khan, requested maps of a hunting area near a rural Salem County, N.J., nuclear power plant and had a hand-held global positioning system. A search of his home found four rifles and one handgun. Khan told authorities he visited the World Trade Center a few days before the attacks and shot videos, the documents said.
The magistrate who ordered Khan held said she didn’t see any connection to terrorism.
Dozens of the names released by Ashcroft had already been made public, but some were disclosed for the first time. They included:
The new information released by Ashcroft did little to quell growing criticism from civil liberties groups and some lawmakers that the Bush administration has gone too far in its aggressive anti-terrorism campaign.
The human rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday that many people in custody since Sept. 11 are being mistreated, including an Egyptian man the group said was assaulted by guards and a Pakistani student it said was beaten by inmates who called him a terrorist.
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who opposed the recently enacted anti-terrorism law, said in a statement Tuesday that he is “deeply troubled” by Ashcroft’s “refusal to provide a full accounting of everyone who has been detained and why.”
But Ashcroft stood firm in his refusal to identify most of the detainees. He said that some are members of the al-Qaida terrorist network and that releasing their names would provide valuable information to Osama bin Laden.
“When the United States is at war, I will not share valuable intelligence with our enemies,” Ashcroft said. “We might as well mail this list to the Osama bin Laden al-Qaida network as to release it.”
The detainees held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service hail from 47 countries, including more than 200 born in Pakistan and smaller groups from Egypt, Turkey, Yemen and India, according to the summary list released Tuesday by the Justice Department.
Only 16 of those now detained came from Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. The vast majority overstayed the time limits imposed by their visas.
The information provided by the Justice Department Tuesday does not include people held by state and local officials on non-federal charges; the federal government stopped counting them earlier this month. At that time, nearly 1,200 people had been detained at least briefly since Sept. 11.
Starting today, lawmakers plan to question Justice Department officials about civil liberties issues. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff is scheduled to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee today, followed next week by Ashcroft.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is also planning separate hearings on President Bush’s order allowing terrorist suspects to be tried by military tribunals, a decision that has provoked widespread criticism at home and abroad.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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