Top court to hear Ashcroft ‘appeal’
‘Bomber’ to be arraigned
WASHINGTON, Oct 12, (Agencies): The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear appeals from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and other former federal officials seeking to shut down lawsuits filed by Muslim and Arab men who were detained in the US after the Sept 11 attacks.
The justices said they will review an appeals court ruling that gave a green a light to the lawsuit claiming that Ashcroft, Mueller and the others should be held accountable for the harsh treatment the men suffered in the months after the worst attacks in US history. The former officials argue they cannot be sued or held liable.
The court also said it will hear a separate appeal about access to the courts from the family of a Mexican teenager who was killed when a US Border Patrol agent fired across the border from Texas into Mexico. The case involves the rights of people who are harmed by American authorities on foreign soil to have their day in US courts.
In the detainees case, the Obama administration is defending Ashcroft, Mueller, James Ziglar, the former commissioner of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the warden and associate warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where more than 80 men were held, many of them charged only with minor civil immigration violations.
A divided panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the men were detained “as if they were terrorists, in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available, simply because these individuals were, or appeared to be, Arab or Muslim.”
The appeals court said that “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.”
The new appeal, stemming from a class-action lawsuit that was originally filed in 2002, is the third time the court has intervened in lawsuits against Ashcroft and others from Muslims who were arrested in the US following the 2001 attacks. The justices have twice sided with Ashcroft.
Ashcroft
Defending
A citizen of Bangladesh who was living in Maryland and has been charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State group has been ordered held while he awaits trial.
Nelash Mohamed Das of Hyattsville was ordered held during a court hearing Tuesday.
The 24-year-old Das was arrested Sept 30. Court documents say he was ready to carry out what he thought was an attack on a member of the US military when he was arrested. The supposed attack was set up by a confidential informant for the FBI.
A man accused of bombings in New York and New Jersey last month that injured dozens is set to be arraigned on New Jersey state charges on Thursday, one of his attorneys said on Tuesday.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was born in Afghanistan, is set to be arraigned at the Union County Courthouse by video feed from his hospital room where he is recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during his arrest, Alexander Shalom said. Union County prosecutors charged Rahami with five counts of attempted murder of a police officer and weapons charges.