3 in Sept. 11 Probe Say They Were Abused in Top Security
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 17, 2002;
Page A01
NEW YORK, April 16 --
Inside the Special Housing
Unit of the Metropolitan
Detention Center in
Brooklyn, dozens of
detainees held for months
in connection with the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks have
been confined to their cells
nearly 24 hours a day.
The lights are always on,
making it difficult to sleep.
The prisoners are subject to
body cavity searches after
each meeting with their
attorneys. They are
transported in shackles,
handcuffs and waist chains.
In some cases, the
detainees have been subject
to harassment by prison
guards and rough treatment
that has left them bloodied.
The conditions were
described by three
detainees recently released
from the Metropolitan
Detention Center (MDC)
who offered a rare glimpse of life inside the federal prison's
maximum security unit, supposedly reserved for some of the
most important suspects in the government's terrorism
investigation.
The facility, run by the Bureau of Prisons, has come under
scrutiny recently because the Justice Department's Office of
Inspector General is conducting a "review" to determine
whether authorities violated the civil rights of detainees held
at MDC and another facility, the Passaic County Jail in
Paterson, N.J.
Immigration lawyers and advocates have lodged repeated
allegations of civil rights violations involving the detainees at
MDC, who over time have numbered perhaps several dozen of
the more than 1,200 people picked up in the government's
dragnet after Sept. 11.
The detentions are part of a Justice Department strategy to
disrupt terrorism using any legal means available. However,
as months have passed, hundreds of detainees, most of Arab
and South Asian descent, have been charged only with
immigration violations and have been released or deported, or
have left the country voluntarily.
The investigation has also led to growing complaints about
civil liberties violations. A legal group, the Center for
Constitutional Rights, announced today that it planned to file
a class action lawsuit Wednesday against Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft, other senior federal officials and unnamed
MDC corrections officers who allegedly committed abuses
against detainees.
"These are people who want to be heard, and what they want
heard is that American democracy has failed them," said
William Goodman, legal director for the Center for
Constitutional Rights. "The main thing they want understood
is that they have identified a policy on the part of the
American government to look at Muslim males and call them
terrorists whether they were or not, and in almost every
circumstance, they were not."
Although the Justice Department has conducted its
investigation in total secrecy, the government has announced
no terrorism-related charges against any of those held under
maximum security conditions at MDC. In fact, it is unclear
why the three detainees who spoke to The Washington Post or
others at MDC had been placed in the Special Housing Unit
rather than other facilities where hundreds of detainees
connected to the investigation have been kept in conditions
that are far less restrictive.
Officials with the Bureau of Prisons, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and the Justice Department declined
to comment on specific cases. One U.S. official said the
decisions on where and how detainees would be confined
were made at "the highest levels of the Justice Department"
and were evaluated case by case.
The decisions, the official said, depended on several issues,
including the nature of the evidence that had been gathered,
available space in the detention facilities and whether the
detainee presented a flight or safety risk. One U.S. official
noted that two years ago at another federal facility, the
Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, an alleged
associate of Osama bin Laden stabbed a guard in the eye with
a sharpened comb, leaving the victim in a coma.
Anser Mehmood, 42, a Pakistani immigrant, said that shortly
after his arrival at MDC, prison guards shoved his face into
the wall, bloodying his lip, and threatened to kill him if he
spoke.
After he was strip-searched, Mehmood said, a guard asked
him: "Do you know why you're here?"
"Yes. I overstayed my visa," Mehmood said he replied.
"No," the guard told him. "You are a World Trade Center
suspect."
Authorities later provided an affidavit from an FBI agent
stating that Mehmood should be held because of evidence
gathered in the investigation, including the fact that
Mehmood, a truck driver, had canceled a delivery to
Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that a teacher of
Mehmood's son had once informed a supervisor that
Mehmood's son stated there was plutonium at his residence.
Mehmood said the trip had actually been canceled by a client
and that, in fact, police came to his home last year after his
son reported seeing bullets, not plutonium, and left after
discovering harmless cylindrical pieces of brass in his
basement.
Mehmood said he was held for 123 days in the Special
Housing Unit before being cleared by the FBI and moved into
the general population, a transition he described as "going
from hell to heaven. When I came out, it was like I was a
human being again."
On April 4, he was transferred from MDC to Passaic County
Jail to await deportation after a judge sentenced him to time
served for overstaying his visa and purchasing a fake Social
Security card that he used to gain employment.
Syed Amjad Jaffri, 38, a Pakistani immigrant, said last week
that he is still not certain why he was sent to MDC after
investigators arrived at his Bronx apartment in late
September. Jaffri, who said he held Canadian residency
status and was close to obtaining Canadian citizenship,
admitted that he had been working in the New York area at
the time, selling surgical and dental supplies in violation of
his tourist visa.
He said that while searching his apartment, investigators
found a stun gun that belonged to one of his landlord's sons
and materials for a home course in private investigation that
he had ordered via a television advertisement.
Jaffri said he was brought to MDC in a motorcade that
included police cars with sirens blaring. With shackles
around his ankles and his hands cuffed to a heavy chain
around his waist, Jaffri said, he was seized by MDC guards
and thrown face first into a wall. The impact, he said,
bloodied his mouth and loosened his teeth.
On April 1, Jaffri was released and deported to Canada,
where he was interviewed. Displaying the teeth he said were
loosened by the attack, Jaffri said that prison authorities
denied his requests to see a dentist or receive a painkiller.
Daniel Dunne, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons,
referred questions about cases related to the terror
investigation to the Justice Department. But he said that the
Bureau of Prisons investigated all allegations of staff
misconduct.
Jaffri said he was placed alone in one of the small cells that
prison officials referred to as "holes." The cell had one
window that had been painted over, blocking the view outside.
He received his meals through a slot in the door. He said for
the first month and a half he was not allowed to shave and
was given "two squares" of toilet paper a day
Jaffri said the lights in his cell were on constantly, making it
difficult to sleep. At night, he said, alarms went off
frequently, waking the detainees, and guards often dragged
heavy chains across the door.
Shakir Ali Baloch, 39, a Canadian citizen and a native of
Pakistan, offered a similar description of life inside the
Special Housing Unit. Baloch said he was taken into custody
by FBI and INS officials in late September while attending
classes in Queens to gain his taxi license.
Baloch said he had entered the country illegally from Canada
and had illegally purchased a fake Social Security card to
acquire a driver's license. But he said he is still unsure why
authorities decided to put him in MDC.
He said he suspects it had something to do with a paperback
military novel investigators found while searching his
apartment. The novel, he said, featured an advertisement on
the back for another book and had a photograph of Osama bin
Laden.
"I think the book was the biggest reason," Baloch said during
an interview this week inside the Passaic County Jail, where
he was transferred after months at MDC. Baloch was
deported to Canada one day after the interview.
Baloch said he was kept in solitary confinement until Feb. 14,
when he was moved into the general population at MDC.
There, he had access to television, books and newspapers and
was allowed to make phone calls.
Asked whether he was angry about the way he had been
treated, Baloch said: "No, I'm not angry. I just want to go
home."
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