Judge Upholds Lawsuit by Muslim Detainees

[Eugene]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5310166,00.html

Judge Upholds Lawsuit by Muslim Detainees


Thursday September 29, 2005 12:16 PM

By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge upheld a lawsuit by two men who claim
they were beaten and starved after a roundup of Muslim men in the wake
of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Egyptian immigrant Ehab Elmaghraby and Pakistani immigrant Javaid
Iqbal filed the lawsuit last year against former Attorney General John
Ashcroft and dozens of other federal officials.

They argued that the government violated their right to appeal their
solitary confinement in a special unit of the Metropolitan Detention
Center in Brooklyn.

U.S. District Judge John Gleeson on Wednesday rejected a claim by
Ashcroft that the lawsuit should be dismissed partly because the
threat of foreign terrorism exempts the government from following
rules made in peacetime.

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