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Court To Hear Muslim Damage Suit Appeal

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The New York Times

Published: June 17, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether top government officials can be sued for damages by Muslim men who were rounded up and imprisoned under harsh conditions in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The case is an appeal by the Bush administration on behalf of John Ashcroft, who at the time was attorney general, and Robert Mueller III, then as now director of the FBI.

The federal appeals court in Manhattan, in a pretrial decision last June, rejected claims of immunity raised by the two officials, as well as other defendants, including the former head of the Bureau of Prisons and the former warden of the Metropolitan Detention Center, where many of the men were held. The lower-ranking officials also appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, but the justices took no action on their petitions Monday.

The lawsuit was filed by two men, Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani, and Ehad Elmaghraby, an Egyptian. Both were deported after months of confinement in the Brooklyn prison section known as ADMAX-SHU, which stands for administrative maximum special housing unit. Elmaghraby settled his claims for a $300,000 payment from the government and is no longer in the case.

Iqbal, who has not settled, was a 33-year-old cable television installer on Long Island at the time of his arrest on Nov. 2, 2001. He lived in Hicksville with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and had an application pending for a green card. He was charged with document fraud for using a Social Security card that belonged to someone else.

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