Many people, including HRW made these claims after 9/11, and these were claims were denied. Now the US Justice Dept itself has confirned what people have been saying all along - the ‘land of the free’ does abuse human rights of people in the United States. Will any action be taken now?
U.S.: Justice Department Report Confirms 9-11 Detainee Abuses
The Bush Administration should take immediate action to remedy the human rights violations documented by the Department of Justice’s internal investigation of its treatment of non-citizens detained after September 11, Human Rights Watch said today. The hard-hitting 198-page report released today by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an internal agency watchdog, confirms abuses reported by Human Rights Watch, including prolonged detention without charge, denial of access to legal counsel, and excessively harsh conditions of confinement.
“The report is a superb exposé of how the Justice Department circumvented people’s basic rights after September 11,” said Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “Now the ball is in the Attorney General’s court. He cannot ignore the damning findings and the detailed recommendations for ensuring these abuses are not repeated.” In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the Justice Department detained over 1,200 non-citizens, primarily from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African countries. The government used immigration charges as a pretext to detain 766 non-citizens while it investigated possible links to terrorism. At most, no more than a handful of these “special interest” detainees have been charged with a terrorism-related crime. The Justice Department has refused to release the identities of these detainees and has conducted the majority of their immigration hearings in secret. Last year, Human Rights Watch reported extensively on the failure of the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to respect the basic human rights of the detainees. (See, “Presumption of Guilt: Human Rights Abuses of Post-September 11 Detainees.”) Today’s OIG report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks,” details many of the same failures and provides new insights into the internal workings of the Justice Department and how it circumvented key constitutional safeguards.