(New York, August 15, 2002)
The U.S. government's
investigation of the September 11 attacks has been marred by arbitrary
detentions, due process violations, and secret arrests, Human Rights
Watch said in a new report released today. The U.S. Department of
Justice has misused immigration charges to dodge legal restraints
on its power to detain and interrogate people as it pursues its terrorist
probe."An immigration violation should not give the government
license to rip up the rule book," said Jamie Fellner, director
of Human Rights Watch's U.S. Program. "By restricting judicial
oversight and blocking public scrutiny, the government has exercised
virtually unchecked power over those it has detained."The ninety-five
page report, "Presumption of Guilt: Human Rights Abuses of Post-September
11 Detainees," is based on Human Rights Watch interviews with
scores of current and former detainees and their attorneys.
The report
provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the Justice Department's
treatment of non-citizens swept up in the post-September 11 investigation.Human
Rights Watch found that the U.S. government has held some detainees
for prolonged periods without charges; impeded their access to counsel;
subjected them to coercive interrogations; and overridden judicial
orders to release them on bond during immigration proceedings. In
some cases, the government has incarcerated detainees for months under
restrictive conditions, including solitary confinement.
Some detainees
were physically and verbally abused because of their national origin
or religion.Some 1,200 non-citizens have been secretly arrested and
incarcerated in connection with the September 11 investigation, although
the government has not disclosed the exact number. The vast majority
are from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African countries.
The report describes cases in which random encounters with law enforcement
or neighbors' suspicions based on no more than national origin and
religion led to interrogation about possible links to terrorism.At
least 752 men were then held on immigration charges while the government
continued to investigate them. Turning the presumption of innocence
on its head, the Department of Justice kept them in detention until
it decided they had no links to or knowledge of terrorism.
None of
the 752 men has been indicted for terrorist-related crimes. Most were
ultimately removed from the United States.Using immigration law violations
to detain these men while they were criminally investigated enabled
the Justice Department to deny non-citizens their rights under U.S.
criminal law - for example, the right to court-appointed counsel and
the right to be promptly charged after arrest. In some cases, the
Justice Department flouted regular procedures to keep non-citizens
in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)
on the off chance that they might be found to be engaged in terrorism,
a practice that amounts to unlawful "preventive detention.""The
U.S. government has failed to uphold the very values that President
Bush declared were under attack on September 11," said Fellner.
"It has ignored basic restraints on a government's power to detain
that are the hallmark of free and democratic nations."Human Rights
Watch also criticized the U.S. government for blocking the public's
right to know what its government is doing. Secret arrests and secret
hearings are incompatible with core democratic values of openness,
government accountability, and the rule of law.Human Rights Watch
calls on the U.S. government to:
- Immediately release the names of
all persons detained since September 11 in connection with the terrorism
investigation, and reverse its policy of secret hearings;
- Inform
all INS detainees of the charges against them within forty-eight hours
of arrest or release them, and rescind the rule that permits indefinite
delay in charging INS detainees in "exceptional circumstances;"
- Advise all INS detainees who are questioned about terrorism of their
right to remain silent, to have an attorney present during questioning,
and to have one court-appointed if needed; and
- Comply immediately
with all judicial orders to release detainees on bond, and stop keeping
persons in INS detention until law enforcement decides that they are
innocent of terrorist links.
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