Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations
July 21, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, July 20 - A report by internal investigators at
the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent
cases in which department employees have been accused of
serious civil rights and civil liberties violations
involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism
law known as the USA Patriot Act.
The inspector general's report, which was presented to
Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is
likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether
the Justice Department can police itself when its employees
are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab
immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations
under the 2001 law.
The report said that in the six-month period that ended on
June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34
complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations
by department employees that it considered credible,
including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in
federal detention centers had been beaten.
The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies
that make up the Justice Department, with most of them
assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal
penitentiaries and detention centers.
The report said that credible accusations were also made
against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement
Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization
Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated
earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Barbara Comstock,
said tonight that the department "takes its obligations
very seriously to protect civil rights and civil liberties,
and the small number of credible allegations will be
thoroughly investigated."
Ms. Comstock noted that the department was continuing to
review accusations made last month in a separate report by
the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, that found broader
problems in the department's treatment of hundreds of
illegal immigrants rounded up after the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001.
While most of the accusations in the report are still under
investigation, the report said a handful had been
substantiated, including those against a federal prison
doctor who was reprimanded after reportedly telling an
inmate during a physical examination that "if I was in
charge, I would execute every one of you" because of "the
crimes you all did."
The report did not otherwise identify the doctor or name
the federal detention center where he worked. The doctor,
it said, had "allegedly treated other inmates in a cruel
and unprofessional manner."
The report said that the inspector general's office was
continuing to investigate a separate case in which about 20
inmates at a federal detention center, which was not
identified, had recently accused a corrections officer of
abusive behavior, including ordering a Muslim inmate to
remove his shirt "so the officer could use it to shine his
shoes."
In that case, the report said, the inspector general's
office was able to obtain a statement from the officer
admitting that he had verbally abused the Muslim inmate and
that he had been "less that completely candid" with
internal investigators from the Bureau of Prisons. The
inspector general's office said it had also obtained a
sworn statement from another prison worker confirming the
inmates' accusations.
The report did not directly criticize the Bureau of Prisons
for its handling of an earlier internal investigation of
the officer, but the report noted that the earlier inquiry
had been closed - and the accused officer initially cleared
- without anyone interviewing the inmates or the officer.
The report is the second in recent weeks from the inspector
general to focus on the way the Justice Department is
carrying out the broad new surveillance and detention
powers it gained under the Patriot Act, which was passed by
Congress a month after the 9/11 attacks.
In the first report, which was made public on June 2, Mr.
Fine, whose job is to act as the department's internal
watchdog, found that hundreds of illegal immigrants had
been mistreated after they were detained following the
attacks.
That report found that many inmates languished in unduly
harsh conditions for months, and that the department had
made little effort to distinguish legitimate terrorist
suspects from others picked up in roundups of illegal
immigrants.
The first report brought widespread, bipartisan criticism
of the Justice Department, which defended its conduct at
the time, saying that it "made no apologies for finding
every legal way possible to protect the American public
from further attacks."
Ms. Comstock, the spokeswoman, said tonight that the
department had been sensitive to concerns about civil
rights and civil liberties after the 9/11 attacks, and that
the department had been aggressive in investigating more
that 500 cases of complaints of ethnic "hate crimes" linked
to backlash from the attacks.
"We've had 13 federal prosecutions of 18 defendants to
date, with a 100 percent conviction rate," she said. "We
have a very aggressive effort against post-9/11
discrimination."
A copy of the report, which was dated July 17 and provided
to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, was made
available to The New York Times by the office of
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking
Democrat on the House panel.
"This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the
surface with respect to the Justice Department's disregard
of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Conyers
said in a statement. "I commend the inspector general for
having the courage and independence to highlight the degree
to which the administration's war on terror has misfired
and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terror
whatsoever.`
The report is Mr. Fine's evaluation of his efforts to
enforce provisions of the Patriot Act that require his
office to investigate complaints of abuses of civil rights
and civil liberties by Justice Department employees. The
provision was inserted into the law by members of Congress
who said they feared that the Patriot Act might lead to
widespread law enforcement abuses.
The report draws no broad conclusions about the extent of
abuses by Justice Department employees, although it
suggests that the relatively small staff of the inspector
general's office has been overwhelmed by accusations of
abuse, many filed by Muslim or Arab inmates in federal
detention centers.
The inspector general said that from Dec. 16 through June
15, his office received 1,073 complaints "suggesting a
Patriot Act-related" abuse of civil rights or civil
liberties.
The report suggested that hundreds of the accusations were
easily dismissed as not credible or impossible to prove.
But of the remainder, 272 were determined to fall within
the inspector general's jurisdiction, with 34 raising
"credible Patriot Act violations on their face."
In those 34 cases, it said, the accusations "ranged in
seriousness from alleged beatings of immigration detainees
to B.O.P. correctional officers allegedly verbally abusing
inmates."
The report said that two of the cases were referred to
internal investigators at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation because they involved bureau employees. In
one case, the report said, the bureau investigated - and
determined to be unsubstantiated - a complaint that an
F.B.I. agent had "displayed aggressive, hostile and
demeaning behavior while administering a pre-employment
polygraph examination."
The report said that the second case involved accusations
from a naturalized citizen of Lebanese descent that the
F.B.I. had invaded his home based on false information and
wrongly accused him of possessing an AK-47 rifle. That
case, it said, is still under investigation by the bureau.
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