BY DAN MIHALOPOULOS
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A federal prison worker admitted that he verbally abused a Muslim inmate, "ordering him to remove his shirt so that the officer could use it to shine his shoes."
An immigration official allegedly asked a man if he "wanted to kill Christians and Jews."
A prison doctor told an inmate, "If I was in charge, I would execute every one of you Â… because of the crimes you all did."
These incidents were among 34 "credible" cases of civil rights violations by Justice Department employees, largely against Arabs and Muslims, according to a report released Monday by department investigators.
The complaints cited by the Justice Department's inspector general ranged from illegal searches of homes by FBI agents to beatings of inmates at the hands of federal jail officers.
The inspector general is also investigating claims that an officer at an immigrant detention facility "held a loaded gun to an alien detainee's head."
The new findings from the internal watchdog follow a report in June that pointed to "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some correctional officers" against foreigners jailed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The June report from Inspector General Glenn Fine also found "significant problems" with the government's handling of hundreds of immigrants with no ties to terrorism who were jailed after the attacks.
While Justice Department officials characterized the complaints in the new report as isolated cases, civil rights advocates said they confirm the government widely discriminates against Arabs and Muslims in its zeal to wage war on terrorism.
The inquiry covered the six months ending June 15 and included an examination of more than 1,000 claims of abuse brought under the USA Patriot Act, a broad anti-terrorism law approved the month after the 2001 attacks.
Because of concerns that the new law would result in civil rights abuses, the act set up a mechanism to investigate complaints and report on that activity twice a year.
The inspector general found that of 1,073 claims, 272 involved claims of civil rights violations by the Justice Department. Of those, 34 were found to be credible.
Department spokesman Mark Corallo noted the 34 cases found worthy of further investigation represent only a fraction of the complaints lodged with the inspector general.
"With very few exceptions, the employees of the Department of Justice are people who uphold and protect civil liberties and civil rights, and this report proved that the system is working," Corallo said. "We take all allegations of civil rights abuses seriously, but we have to put this into perspective."
He also said many of the complaints under investigation could ultimately prove unsubstantiated.
Justice Department officials say the problems detected by the inspector general's latest report do not indicate that authorities are abusing the enhanced surveillance powers granted under the Patriot Act.
But civil rights activists counter that the Patriot Act and other policies created as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism are inherently undemocratic and inevitably lead to human rights abuses.
Critics contend that the secret detentions of immigrants from the Middle East and other Muslim countries for minor immigration violations were unduly harsh and discriminatory.
The Justice Department seems to have a "general policy of targeting Muslims because they are Muslims," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington.
"We're only beginning to see the abuses that have been prompted by the hysteria after Sept. 11," Hooper said. "There are legitimate concerns about terrorism, but those concerns are not addressed by abusing detainees or eliminating the civil liberties that made this country great."
In every case where the report specified race or ethnicity, those complaining of violations were described as Arab or Muslim.
Twenty of the 34 credible cases stemmed from complaints against the federal Bureau of Prisons.
The Office of Internal Affairs in the Bureau of Prisons conducted its own inquiry of a correction officer who told a Muslim inmate to take off his shirt so the officer could use it to shine his shoes. Officials concluded that the allegations were not valid, but the inspector general launched his own investigation because the Office of Internal Affairs failed to interview the officer or the inmates who had complained.
A witness from the bureau provided the inspector general with a sworn statement supporting the allegations. Confronted with the findings, the officer admitted verbally abusing the inmate and being "less than completely candid" when first asked to give his version of the incident.
The findings were forwarded to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which declined to prosecute.
The inspector general recently opened an investigation into a complaint from an Egyptian citizen who allegedly suffered "multiple and duplicative invasive body cavity searches" and was "forced to consume food prohibited by his religion" while jailed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Other allegations against the Bureau of Prisons included complaints that staff made "slanderous remarks about Islam" and threatened to make jail conditions more severe unless inmates cooperated with the government.
The investigation into the prison officer who allegedly put a loaded gun to an inmate's head is ongoing, according to the report.
The inspector general's report in June concluded that the detentions of immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks were harsh, unnecessarily long and sometimes baseless.
Within 11 months of the attacks, 762 people _most from Middle Eastern or predominantly Muslim countries - were detained and designated "of interest," meaning that officials believed they "may have had a connection" to terrorism.
Many of those links turned out to be non-existent or innocuous. Yet it took the FBI an average of three months to clear arrested immigrants of terrorist ties and release or deport them, a process that should have taken just "a few days," the internal investigation found.
Detainees were subjected to secret deportation proceedings established under guidelines quietly issued by the Justice Department.
The government has never publicly identified specific terrorist plots thwarted inside the U.S. by the detentions.
Hussein Ibish, spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the Justice Department has not been responsive to concerns about civil liberties.
"There is no justification for locking up many of these detainees in the first place and certainly no justification for civil rights abuses," Ibish said. "Once you dispense with openness, you have a system that is just set up for abuse."
