A Pakistani man who was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks says he was illegally detained and beaten. The justices will examine whether high-ranking officials are immune from such lawsuits.
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court came to the aid of former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Monday by agreeing to hear his claim that he and other high-level Bush administration officials are shielded from being sued by immigrants who say they were rounded up, abused and beaten after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.The court's move stops for now a lawsuit by a Pakistani man who was held for nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York.
The justices voted to decide whether the president's top appointees are immune from lawsuits growing out of their response to "an unprecedented national security crisis."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, hundreds of immigrants, nearly all of them Muslim men, were taken into custody and questioned. Officials feared then that the Al Qaeda terrorist network could have "sleeper cells" in the United States, and that these operatives might have been planning more attacks.
As the head of the Justice Department, Ashcroft ordered the FBI to move aggressively and to use all available legal means to question suspects and gather intelligence.
The government held most of the immigrants on charges that they had violated immigration laws by, for example, overstaying their visas.
Javaid Iqbal, the plaintiff who sued Ashcroft, was arrested at his Long Island home on Nov. 2, 2001. Two months later, he was put in solitary confinement.
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