Tuesday :: February 28, 2006
U.S. to Pay Detainee in Torture Lawsuit
President Bush says the U.S. does not engage in torture. Not in Iraq, and not at home. Then why did the U.S. agree to pay $300.000 to two detainees to settle their torture lawsuit?
The federal government has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who was among dozens of Muslim men swept up in the New York area after 9/11, held for months in a federal detention center in Brooklyn and deported after being cleared of links to terrorism.
....In the settlement agreement, which requires approval by a federal judge in Brooklyn, lawyers for the government said that the officials were not admitting any liability or fault. In court papers they have said that the 9/11 attacks created "special factors," including the need to deter future terrorism, that outweighed the plaintiffs' right to sue.
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As for the torture,
Mr. Elmaghraby, who spent nearly a year in detention, and the Pakistani man, Javaid Iqbal, held for nine months, charged that while shackled they were kicked and punched until they bled. Their lawsuit said they were cursed as terrorists and subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one in which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby's rectum, making him bleed.
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The Government hasn't exactly denied the allegations:
The government had argued that the lawsuits should be dismissed without testimony because the extraordinary circumstances of the terror attacks justified extraordinary measures to confine noncitizens who fell under suspicion, and because top officials need governmental immunity to combat future threats to national security without fear of being sued.
The Inspector General backs up the detainees' claims.
The inspector general's report said that little effort was made to distinguish between legitimate terrorism suspects and people picked up by chance, and that clearances took months, not days, because they were a low priority. Among the abuses described in the report -- many of them caught on prison videotape -- were beatings, sexual humiliations and illegal recording of lawyer-client conversations.(my emphasis)
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014152.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/28/nyregion/28detain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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