AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED

Sarwar Yamen

In April 1989, Sarwar Yamen arrived in the U.S. after escaping with his wife and two young children from an army camp in Zabul, Afghanistan. He had been forced into the Afghan army to fight the Mujahadin, and tortured in prison. He arrived alone in New York, where he sought political asylum.

Mr. Yamen feared that he might be killed if he was forced to return to his native Afghanistan. His father had been taken from his home and was never seen again. Mr. Yamen's asylum application was denied in October 1989, but he was given a short-term visitor's visa. (His wife and children sought refugee status in England and lived there while he was in the United States. His wife was recently granted British citizenship, but his children still have Afghani citizenship.)

For several years, Mr. Yamen lived in Queens, New York where he worked at a fast-food restaurant and as a limousine driver. On October 10, 2001, he arrived home from work to find that FBI and INS agents had entered without permission and searched his home. The officers told him that he was under arrest because he did not have valid immigration papers and because someone opposed to the U.S. had made phone calls from his telephone. Mr. Yamen told the FBI agents that he had not made these calls and knew of no one else who could have made them. He was placed in handcuffs and leg shack

les and taken to a detention center in New York City.

The next day he was transferred to Passaic County Jail, in Paterson, New Jersey. At one point he was pulled out of line by a guard, asked what he thought about September 11. Mr. Yamen replied, "I know you're mad, but I'm doubly mad. I'm scared too. Now this country is bad for me too." The guard told Mr. Yamen he couldn't be trusted and kicked him until his legs bled. He was then placed in solitary confinement for 19 days. After spending three months at Passaic County Jail, he was transferred to Middlesex Correctional Center in New Jersey.

On February 11, 2002, after he had spent four months in detention, Mr. Yamen and 75 other detainees at the Middlesex Correctional Center went on a hunger strike. Mr. Yamen did not eat for 13 days. He resumed eating only after officials told him that he could go home in two weeks. When he began to eat again, though, the government did not send him home.

During these months of detention, both the FBI and the INS interviewed Mr. Yamen. Following his hunger strike, in late February 2002, the FBI officially cleared him. Despite FBI clearance, and several requests for hearings about his case, he was not released or deported. He was transferred to Sussex County Jail, New Jersey on May 9, 2002.

Frustrated by the non-responsiveness of the INS officials and his eight months of continued detention, Mr. Yamen, along with others at Sussex County Jail, staged a hunger strike on June 3, 2002. The other detainees broke their strike on June 5, 2002, after INS officers visited. Once again, the INS officers promised Mr. Yamen that he would be deported to Pakistan very soon if he would "just start to eat." Mr. Yamen continued his hunger strike, and was sent to solitary confinement on June 5, 2002. Five days later, he collapsed and was sent to the hospital for a cut on his head, and to see a psychiatrist. After his fall, he was kept at the intake center and monitored every 15 minutes throughout the day and night.

Three days later, on June 13, 2002, Mr. Yamen was transferred to an Immigration Detention Facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He had a thorough medical exam, and met with two government officers, who he describes as a "warden" and a "secretary of immigration" who told him that they were familiar with his case and had sent a special report on his behalf to Washington, D.C. They told him, "If you start eating again, you will be released within three weeks."

On June 24, 2002, Mr. Yamen finally ended his hunger strike. On July 14, 2002, he was finally released and sent to Pakistan, where he was reunited with his wife and children.

An ACLU Report

Her testimony, barely eight weeks into the Justice Department's investigation, has now been virtually echoed by the department's own inspector general in his April 2003 report about the failures of the post-9/11 immigration roundups and arrests.

"The ACLU recognizes the right - indeed the responsibility of federal law enforcement to gather relevant information in the course of its investigation into the September 11 terrorist attacks," she said. "But discriminatory, dragnet profiling is neither an effective investigative technique nor a permissible substitute for the constitutional requirement of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing."

Still unable to learn enough about individual identities, on Dec. 5, 2001, Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, wrote letters to the Consulates of Pakistan, Egypt and almost two dozen other countries. He offered the consulates the ACLU's "Know Your Rights" brochure for immigrants and asked if they had been contacted by individuals arrested or detained.

"We are quite concerned that current efforts to combat terrorism may undermine the basic freedoms and liberties that are the foundation of our democracy," he

wrote.

Also in December 2001, the ACLU joined with other organizations to file a FOIA lawsuit in federal court to learn the names of and locations of people being detained. The lawsuit, Center for National Security Studies v. United States Department of Justice, was successful at the District Court level, with Judge Gladys Kessler ordering the disclosure of the desired information.

"A Frustrated ACLU Tries to Guide Consulates Through a Thicket," The New York Times

AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED

Benamar Benatta

Benamar Benatta arrived from Algeria in

December 2000. He was part of a group of Algerian Air Force technicians being trained by Northrop Grumman in Baltimore. When the course ended, Mr. Benatta stayed: He did

not want to return to Algeria. He worked as a busboy in New York City, overstaying his six-month visa. Then, on Sept. 5, 2001, he tried to enter Canada to request political asylum. He was detained at the border for having a fake ID.

His fears about returning to Algeria center on the country's violent Islamic fundamentalist movement as well as its military. "I had a prob

lem with the terrorists who wanted to kill me and the military, which was beating and torturing people," he told The Washington Post in an interview conducted not long ago.

Six days after Mr. Benatta arrived at Canada's border, the terrorists struck, and Canadian officials handed over Mr. Benatta to United States Immigration authorities. He was taken to Niagara Falls, New York, for questioning and detained at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia, New York, for four days. He was then taken by plane - shackled at the ankles, waist and arms to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, where he was placed in a solitary confinement cell.

The FBI determined, in November of 2001, that Mr. Benatta had no ties whatsoever to terrorist activity. Yet he still remains in custody today.

"Two years ago, I had hopes. I was okay." Mr. Benatta told The Washington Post during his interview at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York "Now I lie in my cell and think: 'What has become of me?""

Behind the unconscionable delay in releasing him is a trail of trampled rights. Mr. Benatta was denied access to lawyers when he arrived at the MDC, where, he said, guards scrawled "WTC" on the door of his cell and harassed him by banging on the door to interrupt his sleep. For weeks, he could not leave the cell (except for FBI interrogations). He was forced to strip as guards mocked him, he said. He was told not to speak. And he was physically abused while shackled his head banged against the wall, his waist-chain pulled so tight it was difficult to breathe.

During his stay at MDC, he had several hearings before an immigration judge - these were closed hearings, and Mr Benatta was not represented The judge issued a deportation order in December 2001.

Mr. Benatta remained in solitary confinement until April 2002, when he was transferred to the Buffalo facility. There, he finally got legal representation from a court-appointed lawyer, who fought the criminal charge related to the fake ID.

In September 2003, the judge in the case. Federal Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr., wrote in a decision that Mr. Benatta's imprisonment was a "charade" and that "the defendant in this case undeniably was deprived of his liberty," and "held in harsh conditions which can be said to be oppressive." The next month, the criminal charges were dropped.

Mr. Benatta, however, remains in the Batavia facility unable to post a $25,000 bond imposed to keep him detained pending deportation. The original deportation order has now been nullified by the Department of Justice, and Mr. Benatta is being permitted to pursue his asylum claim at an upcoming bond re-determination hearing.

"The detainees described physical abuse, that they were thrown up against the wall, that lights were on constantly, that it was freezing. They tried to put blankets on themselves, but guards would get angry about that when they had 'counts.' They also said that the pro bono lawyer list was out of date, that they could only have one phone call a week and that busy signals counted. They were frightened and confused and didn't

understand why they were in maximum security."

Chris Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, also noted the many problems the men had contacting lawyers. The facility had a list of lawyers' phone numbers, and "the principal resource on that list was Legal Aid," Dunn said. "But the Legal Aid office was near the World Trade Center and it was closed after the attacks. So when a detainee called the number for Legal Aid, no one answered. And that counted as a call." Revising the list was a major bureau

AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED

Anser Mehmood

Anser Mehmood came to the United States in 1994 with his wife, Uzma, and three

sons. A fourth son was born in America in

2000. "I never get arrested for any reason," said the 44-year-old Mr. Mehmood, who operated a trucking company in New Jersey. "I always pay my taxes on time. In other words, I am a very law-abiding person in this country except an overstayed visa."

On the morning of October 3, 2001, Mr. Mehmood was resting in his Bayonne, New Jersey, home when "somebody knocked very hard on my door." Looking out the window, he saw FBI people "with their full uniform." He was "amazed," he said, and wondered "Why they come to my house?" The FBI later claimed that it had received a "tip" from someone at a company that contracted with Mr. Mehmood for trucking services. The tipster reported that Mr. Mehmood had refused to deliver packages to Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. However, that tip mischaracterized the events of that day. Mr. Mehmood had been in Philadelphia on the morning of September 11, picking up a load of furniture bound for Washington, D.C. However, at around 10:00, the delivery run was canceled because of the terrorist attacks. Mr. Mehmood went home. Acting on this erroneous tip, the FBI went to his home to question him.

The agents did not have a search warrant. "They just told me, 'We are from FBI and we want to search the house."" He told them to go ahead. "I don't have any type of fear," he recalled. After searching the premises and questioning the couple for hours, the agents said they wanted to arrest Mr. Mehmood's wife because they suspected

her two brothers of credit-card fraud. But because the baby, who was ill, cried when being separated from his mother, an agent other children were at school). "He says that agreed to take Mr. Mehmood instead. (The

"yes, we don't have to take the mother, but we have to take somebody from the house.""

Mehmood was taken - in full-body shackles After a night at a holding facility, Mr.

to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn. Upon arrival, he was assaulted by guards while shackled. "They throw me on the wall. My hand was broken at that day. My lip was bleeding. And they terrified me because I was not a criminal. Why they are doing this thing to me? So they repeat the same thing about six or seven times on different walls."

Mr. Mehmood was then taken to a cell, where a guard told him he was a World Trade Center suspect. "When I heard this thing, I was relaxed," he said. "I said, yeah, they got the wrong guy and they are going to come to know in a couple of hours." He said he knew the country was "going through a very difficult situation - those innocent people who burn in those World Trade Center buildings. I feel a lot for those people."

He was detained for six months at the MDC. For about four months, he was (like many immigrant detainees at the facility) kept in a solitary confinement cell for 23 hours a day. "I don't have any idea where 1 am. Only I can see the Statue of Liberty from my cell."

For about two weeks, Mr. Mehmood was denied phone contact with lawyers and