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"I believe a settlement of this size is a deterrent to the United States from ever again rounding up innocent non-citizens," said Meeropol. |
CAIRO – The US government will pay $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit with five Muslim immigrants who were unfairly detained and abused following the 9/11 attacks.
"I believe a settlement of this size is a deterrent to the United States from ever again rounding up innocent non-citizens based only on suspicion about their race and religion," lawyer Rachel Meeropol told The New York Times on Tuesday, November 3.
The lawsuit was first filed as a class action in 2002 against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other US official.
It maintained that the Muslim immigrants were unjustifiably detained for some nine months following 9/11 before being cleared of charges.
US authorities detained the five men following the 9/11 attacks and held them in high-security prisons where they were physically abused.
"These were guys called terrorists and treated as terrorists, shoved against the blood-spattered picture of the American flag and told, you’re never getting out of here alive," said Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the detainees.
He insisted that though the government has refused to admit liability in the terms of settlement, the paid amount speaks volumes about what the detainees suffered.
"And it’s a long way from that to where they are now."
Thousands of Muslims and Arabs were rounded up and questioned in the US in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks.
Several Muslims and Arabs who were randomly detained have sued the US government after their release for inhumane and degrading treatment.
A 2004 report by the US Senate Office Of Research admitted that Arab and Muslim Americans took the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers rushed through Congress in the aftermath of 9/11.
Priceless
Yasser Ebrahim, who had a website design business in Brooklyn, recalls how he and his younger brother were detained 19 days after 9/11.
They were designated "persons of interest" to terror investigators and sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
At the high-security facility, they were chained, shackled and slammed into a wall where an American-flag T-shirt had been taped.
The Muslim brothers were repeatedly cursed by their American jailors as terrorists and shoved into walls whenever they were taken from their cells.
The hellish experience also included having the jailors twisting their wrists and fingers and stepping on their leg chains.
After more than eight months of daily abuses, the two brothers were released without charges.
"Being held in that place for 249 days — $270,000 is not going to make up for that experience," said Ebrahim.
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