A U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Arabs and Muslims who were detained after the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of being terrorists based on their color, religion or ethnicity could sue the high-level officials who were in charge at the time.
"There was no legitimate governmental purpose in holding someone in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available simply because he happened to be-or, worse yet, appeared to be Arab or Muslim," Circuit Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley wrote in an unusual, 109-page joint decision.
Wednesday’s 2-1 decision will allow the prosecution of Bush administration officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller and Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James Ziglar.
Previously in 2013, another judge in Brooklyn had dismissed the claims against the officials, while allowing claims against the jail wardens.
The claims against Ashcroft, Mueller and Ziglar are by former inmates at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. These inmates claimed they were illegally singled out as Muslims, Arabs or South Asians for 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, strip searches, sleep deprivation and other abuses.
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However, Wednesday’s decision has triggered controversy over the prosecution of executive officials. In a 91-page dissent, Circuit Judge Reena Raggi blasted the majority for becoming the first court to allow such claims against Executive Branch officials for national security policies "propounded to safeguard the nation" after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks in New York City.
Raggi also complained that such ruling would make it difficult to protect the U.S. against terrorism.
Meanwhile, Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights representing the inmates, welcomed the majority decision. "The rule of law and the rights of human beings, whether citizens or not, must not be sacrificed in the face of national security hysteria," she said.
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