U.S. Agrees to Pay Egyptian Man $300K For Post-9/11 Detention in Unprecedented Settlement

The U.S. has government has agreed to pay an Egyptian man $300,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that the man was illegally detained during the round-up of hundreds of Arab and Muslim men inside the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The man, Ehab Elmaghraby, was detained on Sept. 30, 2001. Federal agents came to his apartment in Queens New York in search of his landlord who - years earlier - had applied for pilot training. Even though he wasn't the original target of the investigation, Elmaghraby was detained. He would spend nearly the next year in jail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

In the end, Elmaghraby was deported after pleading guilty to the white-collar crime of credit card fraud. But for his year in detention he was treated like a wanted terrorist.

He was kept in a maximum security section of the jail reserved almost exclusively for Muslim or Arab men. Conditions were so bad that the New York Daily News described the site as "Brooklyn's Abu Ghraib."

According to a lawsuit filed by Elmaghraby, he was beaten by prison guards. Threatened with death. Accused of being a terrorist. Repeatedly stripped search. Dragged on the ground while chained and shackled. Denied basic necessities like a mattress, pillow and toilet paper.

In one instance, he accused, a prison guard of making him bleed after a guard inserted a flashlight into him rectum. At other times they used pencils.

Elmaghraby wasn't alone in claiming abuse inside the Metropolitan Detention Center. Two years ago the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine issued a damning report implicating 20 guards in carrying out widespread abuse against the jailed men.

The report read, "Some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time."

The government actually videotaped much of the abuse but has so far resisted calls for it to be publicly released. However the public has seen images from the video showing the prison guards beating detainees.

The $300,000 settlement is believed to mark the first time the government has agreed to pay out money to a Muslim or Arab man jailed in the post 9/11 sweeps. Other lawsuits remain pending in court.

* Ehab Elmaghraby, Egyptian citizen who was detained in New York City shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and spent nearly a year in jail. According to his lawsuit he was shackled and kicked and punched until he bled. He was subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one in which correction officers inserted a flashlight into his rectum, making him bleed. He joins us on the phone from Alexandria, Egypt.
* Haeyoung Yoon, attorney with the Urban Justice Center representing Ehab Elmaghraby.
* Mamoni Bhattacharyya, attorney with the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

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