|
Saudis Freed From U.S. Jails Claim Maltreatment
RIYADH, Jan. 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A number of Saudis freed from U.S. jails following weeks of detention after the September 11 attacks claim they were maltreated and "psychologically abused" by prison authorities.
The men, many of whom have already returned to the kingdom permanently, spoke of arbitrary detention, trials and deportation orders.
"Armed FBI agents raided my flat in Stamford, Florida. I was arrested like a murderer. They put cuffs on my hands and legs and took me to jail," aviation student Adel al-Oteibi, who returned to Riyadh last week, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Oteibi, who had almost completed his studies, said he was held for 50 days because, he was told, he failed to attend a student meeting on September 12, he repeatedly hired planes to fly, and his father was a “religious extremist”.
Nothing was proven, but a judge still ordered that his deportation, according to the 25-year-old Oteibi. He said he was behind bars from October 28 to December 16, 2001.
He said prison officials interrogated him several times while he was in Manatee County Jail, Tampa, Florida, and told him that hundreds of people were killed in Afghanistan by U.S.-led bombings.
"This was just like a psychological war," Oteibi said, adding however, that he had no plans to take the issue to court.
U.S. authorities have already been charged with more than psychological torture. Rafiq Butt, a Pakistani national detained as a material witness and not charged with a crime, died while in Immigration and Naturalization (INS) custody on October 24, 2001.
The FBI claimed that Butt had died of cardiac arrest.
U.S. authorities released 12 Saudis last week who were detained after hijacked airliners were flown into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon just outside Washington.
According to the manager of the Saudi ambassador's office in Washington, Ahmad al-Qattan, 173 Saudis have been arrested in the United States.
Fifty-four still remain behind bars, mostly for immigration offences, Qattan was quoted as saying in the London-based Saudi-owned Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Several hundred Saudis, many of them students, have since returned to the kingdom. King Fahd ordered Saudi universities to admit all students in programs similar to their studies on their return to the country.
Soon after the September 11 attacks, Saudis and other Muslims reported incidents of abuse and harassment from fellow students and community members.
Some 5,500 Saudi students, mostly on government scholarships, were enrolled in U.S. universities before September 11.
Essam al-Habsi, a 27-year-old computer student, said he was found innocent after 13 days in detention following a false complaint by the foreign students’ office at the University in Springfield, Missouri.
After returning to the Red Sea city of Jeddah, he declined a U.S. Consulate offer to grant him a new visa to be able to continue with his studies.
"I told them I was repeatedly humiliated while in detention. I am psychologically broken and depressed," Habsi said in a statement to the press.
Lawyer Kateb al-Shemmari said he has been consulting other Saudi and American lawyers to explore the possibility of filing lawsuits seeking damages for Saudis who were detained in the United States.
Shemmari announced in November that he was planning to file a lawsuit on behalf of a Saudi national whose name appeared by mistake on the first Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) list of terror suspects.
"I have been authorized by a number of Saudis who said they were maltreated and abused in U.S. jails. We are gathering evidence to see if it is possible to file the cases," Shemmari told AFP.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that U.S. authorities will soon begin searching for approximately 6,000 “Middle Eastern men” in the United States who have disappeared after being ordered to leave the country
The men come from countries U.S. authorities consider havens for members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
Rights groups state that although the U.S. is targeting Arab and Muslim men, the vast majority of people ignoring deportation orders are Hispanics from Latin America, leading to conclude that the government is practicing racial profiling, the Post reported.
|
