Related: Tortuous Immunity
"Court refuses to revisit ruling on Ashcroft" by Associated Press | March 19, 2010
BOISE — A federal appellate court said yesterday that it would not reconsider its ruling that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for misuse of the material witness statute after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The ruling was made after a majority of the full US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted to deny Ashcroft’s request amid bitter dissent by eight of its judges. Abdullah al-Kidd, a US citizen, sued Ashcroft and other federal officials after he was arrested and jailed as a material witness in a terrorism case against another man. He said his arrest and detention were a ruse to give the government time to investigate him for any potential wrongdoing. He was never called to testify at trial....
--more--"Actually, he did receive some from higher up.
Flashbacks:
"High court blocks detainee's lawsuit" by Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press | May 19, 2009
WASHINGTON - FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft cannot be sued by a former Sept. 11 detainee who claimed he was abused because of his religion and ethnicity, a sharply divided Supreme Court said yesterday in a decision that could make it harder to sue top officials for the actions of low-level operatives.
Reinvigorating the Nuremberg defense, 'eh?
The court overturned a lower court decision that let Javaid Iqbal's lawsuit against the high-ranking officials proceed. Iqbal is a Pakistani Muslim who spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York in 2002. He had argued that although Ashcroft and Mueller did not single him out for mistreatment, they were responsible for a policy of confining detainees in highly restrictive conditions because of their religious beliefs or race. But the government argued that there was nothing linking Mueller and Ashcroft to the abuses that happened to Iqbal at a Brooklyn, N.Y. prison's Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit, and the court agreed....
Except for the memos fired off by the gang of eight.
Iqbal was arrested at his Long Island home on Nov. 2, 2001, and charged with nonviolent federal crimes unrelated to terrorism. Two months later, he was moved to a facility in Brooklyn, where he was in solitary confinement for more than 150 days without a hearing, his lawsuit alleges. He was cleared of involvement in terrorism and deported after pleading guilty to fraud....
Is that the AmeriKan Justice we are always lecturing the world about?
So win one, lose one, 'eh, John?
"'Court rules Ashcroft can be held liable in 9/11 case; Man detained as witness in 2003 filed suit" by Rebecca Boone, Associated Press | September 5, 2009
BOISE, Idaho - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke yesterday to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former attorney general John Ashcroft can be held liable for the wrongful detention of people who were seized as material witnesses after the terrorist attacks.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the government’s improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11, 2001, was “repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.’’
The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism case can sue Ashcroft over alleged violations of his constitutional rights. Abdullah al-Kidd, a US citizen and former University of Idaho student, filed the lawsuit against Ashcroft and other officials in 2005, contending that his civil rights were violated when he was detained as a material witness for two weeks in 2003. Kidd said the investigation and detention not only caused him to lose a scholarship to study in Saudi Arabia, but cost him employment opportunities and caused his marriage to fall apart.
How do you really repay a person for that?
He contended that his detention exemplified an illegal government policy created by Ashcroft to arrest and detain people - particularly Muslim men and those of Arab decent - as material witnesses if the government suspected them of a crime but had no evidence to charge them.
Ashcroft had asked the judge to dismiss the matter, saying that because his position at the Department of Justice was prosecutorial he was entitled to absolute immunity from the lawsuit....
That is the THINKING of a FASCIST!!!
The Ninth Circuit judges said Kidd’s allegations plausibly suggest that Ashcroft purposely used the material witness statute to detain suspects whom he wished to investigate and detain preventively.
“Sadly, however, even now, more than 217 years after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing, or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world,’’ Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote, for the majority.
“We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history,’’ Smith wrote.
Bravo, judge!
The Department of Justice may now ask the full Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling by the three-judge panel, may appeal to the Supreme Court, or it could allow the lawsuit to revert back to the US District Court in Boise.
They did ask the full court.
What is with Obama's Justice Department, anyway?
NO CHANGE from BUSH!
The ruling was the latest legal development in a saga dating to 2003, when Kidd was standing in the Dulles International Airport and surrounded by federal agents as he prepared to travel to Saudi Arabia to study. The Kansas-born husband and father of two was held for two weeks before being sent to Idaho and released to the custody of his wife by a federal court judge. The government thought Kidd had crucial testimony in a computer terrorism case against fellow Idaho student Sami Omar Al-Hussayen.
Kidd and Hussayen both worked on behalf of the Islamic Assembly of North America, a Michigan-based charitable organization that federal investigators alleged funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and published material advocating suicide attacks on the United States. After an eight-week trial, a federal jury acquitted Hussayen of using his computer skills to foster terrorism and of three immigration violations. He was deported to Saudi Arabia. Kidd was never charged with a crime.
Did he at least get an apology? No?
In his suit, Kidd contends that he still suffers from the effects of his arrest and confinement. He says he was jailed for 16 days in high-security cells that were lit 24 hours a day, and that he was strip searched several times. When a court ordered that he be freed, he was required to live with his wife and in-laws in Nevada, limit his travel to Nevada and three other states, surrender his passport and other travel documents, report to a probation officer, and submit to home visits.
Even though he NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG!
The confinement and supervision lasted 15 months, and by the time it ended he had separated from his wife and had been fired from his job as an employee of a government contractor because the arrest left him unable to get the necessary security clearance.
All because of that damnable inside job of a lie on 9/11.
