THE US: Many innocent foreigners in the United States were held in jail for months in "unduly harsh" conditions without contact with families or lawyers in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001, attacks, according to a report from the US Justice Department's inspector general, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor in Washington.
The long-awaited report confirms the fears of civil rights groups that the Justice Department under the Attorney General, Mr John Ashcroft, abused the rights of undocumented immigrants with no connection to terrorism and who were arrested after the attacks mainly because of their Middle Eastern origin.
It accuses the FBI of taking too long to determine whether the 762 foreigners detained were involved with terrorism and to release them after their innocence was established.
The report by Insp Gen Glenn Fine found "significant problems" in the Bush administration's treatment of people held on immigration violations and a pattern of "physical and verbal abuse" by guards, but did not specify if laws were broken or civil rights abused.
"We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks," said a Justice Department spokeswoman, Ms Barbara Comstock. US laws were "scrupulously followed and respected".
However the investigation, which centred mainly on the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn where 84 detainees, mainly Pakistanis, were held, found that a presumption of guilt was applied to those detained, some of whom were simply found at traffic stops to have expired visas.
Staff at the nine-storey jail routinely and wrongly told lawyers and relatives who inquired about specific detainees that they were not held there. "Certain conditions of confinement were unduly harsh, such as illuminating the detainees' cells for 24 hours a day," the report said.
It was common practice for officers in Brooklyn to slam prisoners against a wall before video-taping their statements. They were subjected to a 23-hour lockdown and forced to wear leg irons and heavy chains outside their cells for offences treated as civil crimes before September 11th.
Guards would ask, "Are you OK?" and if the answer was "Yes," they took it as a waiver of the right to a weekly phone call to a lawyer. False numbers were given for lawyers. Calls to families or embassies were allowed only once a month and if engaged or answered by voice mail were counted.
Detainees were often held even after FBI clearance, the report went on.
Some were kept in custody for up to eight months. One was held for a further three months after clearance due to an "administrative oversight". Only one detainee, Zacarias Moussaoui, was charged with any terrorism-related crime.
A total of 505 immigrants were eventually deported and the remainder released after FBI clearance, which typically took 80 days.
Ms Kathy Hawk Sawyer, director of the US Bureau of Prisons, said two senior officials in Mr Ashcroft's office told her to "not be in a hurry" to allow detainees to be held in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks to call their lawyers or families, as long as her actions did not violate any laws.
Mr Anthony Romero, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings confirmed "our long-held view that civil liberties and the rights of immigrants were trampled in the aftermath of 9/11".
Insp Gen Fine said he was following up allegations of individual abuse but noted that the Bureau of Prisons had cited an "al-Qaeda training manual" which urged terrorists to claim mistreatment in prison. He proposed 21 reforms, including better criteria for determining links to terrorism during any future mass arrests of illegal immigrants.