Wednesday, October 12, 2016

It certainly takes long enough.

There was a Pakistani man in New Jersey who had a heart attack after being arrested. That was in the first 48 hours after 911. There were probably others, but, I remember hearing that report on the radio. It was just wrong. As an American the violations were palpable. 

October 11, 2016
Washington — The Supreme Court (click here) agreed on Tuesday to decide whether high-ranking George W. Bush administration officials — including John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director — may be held liable for policies adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The case began as a class action in 2002 filed by immigrants, most of them Muslim, over policies and practices that swept hundreds of people into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on immigration violations in the weeks after the attacks. The plaintiffs said they had been subjected to beatings, humiliating searches and other abuses.
The roundups drew criticism from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who in 2003 issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.
A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, let the case proceed last year.
“The suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were caught up in the hysteria of the days immediately following 9/11 is not without a remedy,” Judges Rosemary S. Pooler and Richard C. Wesley wrote in a joint opinion....