Tags : ashcroft, terrorism
Appeals Court Grants Muslim Man Right To Sue Ashcroft For Detainment
San Francisco, CA (AHN) – On Friday a federal appeals court granted a Muslim man who spent weeks detained as a material witness in a terrorism case the right to personally sue former attorney general John D. Ashcroft. The decision rejected a bid for absolute legal immunity by the former Cabinet official under the Bush administration.
The Californian appeals court for the 9th Circuit comprised of three judges O.K.’d the case filed by Abdullah Al-Kidd potentially opening up Ashcroft for liability. The U.S. Citizen was on his way to Saudi Arabia in 2003 when he was taken into custody at a ticket counter at Washington’s Dulles International Airport on his way to study Islamic law and Arabic.
According to court documents Al-Kidd a Kansas native and one-time college football star became a target of U.S. surveillance in a broad anti-terrorism investigation allegedly aimed at Arab and Muslim men. During his detainment he was interrogated by the FBI for 16 days and upon release had his travel limited for another year.
However legal experts say the real crux of the lawsuit is the stance the Justice Department and the FBI took after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ashcroft who was the nation’s attorney general at the time, publicly proclaimed law enforcement would take “suspected terrorists off the street” and engage in “aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses” in an attempt to disrupt possible al-Qaeda plots.
Al-Kidd’s lawyers and many others critical of the sweeping legislations passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks, believe Ashcroft constructed a policy under which the FBI and Justice Department would use the federal material witness law as a pretext “to arrest and detain terrorism suspects about whom they did not have sufficient evidence to arrest on criminal charges but wished to hold preventively or to investigate further.”
What Al-Kidd and his attorneys allege is the nation’s top legal expert should have known that the material witness statute was being used in a sweeping and abusive manner.
Al-Kidd who is African-American and converted to Islam had an arrest warrant issued based on an FBI affidavit that said he was needed to testify at the trial of a Saudi man who had been indicted on visa fraud. Court documents show he was never called as a witness in that case and the defendant in that case was acquitted.
Al-Kidd’s lawyers reveal their client was interrogated by the FBI and was moved to three different states; Virginia, Oklahoma, and Idaho. The whole time being kept in chains and 24 hour illuminated high security cells.
Ashcroft, however who is being represented by the department he once presided over believes the case should be dismissed because he had no personal involvement in Al-Kidd’s detention. Ashcroft also contends his once preeminent law enforcement status should protect him from lawsuits.
However to Ashcroft’s dismay Judges Milan D. Smith Jr. and David R. Thompson do not agree with his assessment of legal privileges.
In court documents the judges ascertained that Ashcroft was not entitled to absolute legal immunity and that authorities had detained Al-Kidd in part to conduct an investigation of his activities, without probable cause. Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote a partial dissent.
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