Detained for Terror

By Ann Harrison, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2001.

When Muhammad Rafiq Butt died in the New Jersey's Hudson County jail on Oct. 23 after a month of detention, no one knew he was there. The 55-year-old Pakistani restaurant worker was one of the 1,147 people detained for questioning in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. Until county officials announced that Butt had been found dead in his jail cell, neither the Pakistani consulate, Butt's family, nor members of the local Pakistani community knew of his incarceration.

The Justice Department has since confirmed that they have no evidence linking Butt to the hijackers. Butt, instead, was being held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for overstaying his visitor's visa and lacking proper travel documents. Yet his detention was cloaked in secrecy. Butt's name was expunged from immigration charging documents. The INS has sealed the records of his bond hearing. Pakistani consulate officials were never notified of his detention.

According to the Regional Medical Examiner's office in Newark, New Jersey, a preliminary autopsy determined that Butt died of heart problems and that there was no evidence of trauma or foul play. A Hudson County spokesman said Butt had complained of pain in his gums and had been brought to a dentist, who gave him the antibiotic tetracycline.

When Butt was found dead by prison guards, the spokesman said a Hazmat unit was called in as a precautionary measure because officials said he was detained days after the attacks and he was of Middle Eastern descent. Butt's cell mate and a handful of guards received nasal swab tests for anthrax which proved negative. But no one bothered to contact the Pakistani consulate to report his death.

Human rights attorneys say many immigrants like Butt, who speak little English, often do not understand that they have the right to make phone calls to lawyers and loved ones. And some, such as political dissidents, have good reasons for not contacting their consulates. But civil liberties groups say Butt's virtual disappearance into detention on Sept. 19 is just one of many cases where the government has withheld public information about detainees. Non-citizens held on immigration charges are most vulnerable because they have no right to an attorney while in custody. Butt appeared at his hearing with a translator, but without legal counsel.

Dr. Mansoor Khan, a Pakistani physician who publishes the Pakistan Voice, a newspaper for the New York area Pakistani community, says the lack of information about Butt's detainment has prompted his family back in Pakistan to imagine the worst. "They are saying that something went wrong with him in interrogation," said Khan. "No information is there. They do not think that he died of natural causes."

To date, little is known about the identities and detention conditions of others held on immigration charges related to the Sept. 11 investigation. The government has released only a trickle of information about those detained as material witnesses and those arrested on unrelated criminal charges. According to civil liberties organizations, the absence of those basic facts, coupled with the lack of debate and rushed passage of anti-terrorism legislation, has cast the government's actions in an unprecedented veil of secrecy.

"I think it is alarming to have people picked up by the hundreds and held on secret charges," says Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington D.C. "It raises serious questions about mass secret detentions and we have never had those in this country."

Who Are the Detainees?

According to Justice Department spokesperson Dan Nelson, the 1,147 people detained in the anti-terrorism investigation fall into three categories: approximately 185 people are being held on immigration law violations; a small, but undisclosed number are being held as material witnesses; and a large group is detained under federal, state or local criminal charges unrelated to the Sept. 11 attacks. The Justice Department will not reveal how many detainees have been released. Nelson says withholding information about detainees is necessary to protect the privacy of those held on immigration charges or to shield sensitive grand jury records.

"The Department of Justice has consistently released to the public information on criminal complaints and INS documents as they have been made available," said Nelson. "Our practice will be to continue to release as much information as possible."

No civil liberties groups are suggesting that Butt died of anything but natural causes. But they contend that the continuing secrecy surrounding the detainees, and the selective release of information by the government, raises questions about the possible rights violations which the government should address. On Oct. 17, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft seeking more information about the detainees. When Ashcroft declined to provide any information, ACLU members met on Oct. 26 with Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The group said that Mueller was unresponsive to their requests.

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