WASHINGTON — A government lawyer told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft should not be subjected to lawsuits filed by Arab Muslims who were detained in this country after the Sept. 11 attacks and say they were singled out for harsh treatment because of their religion and ethnicity.
Solicitor General Gregory Garre told the justices that Ashcroft and Mueller are protected from such suits when they are carrying out their duties and that their actions constituted a “perfectly lawful law-enforcement response to the 9/11 attacks.”
The oral arguments in the case produced a lively debate as justices pondered the reach of civil lawsuits targeting public officials who allegedly abuse civil rights, the ability of the nation’s leaders to go about their work without harassment and whether the balance is altered, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, “after an attack on this country of the magnitude of 9/11.”
Ashcroft and Mueller were named in the lawsuit by Javaid Iqbal, a Pakastani television cable installer who was arrested at his Long Island home in the months after the attack. He was held in solitary confinement in a section of a Brooklyn prison known as Admax-Shu, for “administrative maximum special housing unit,” where he said he was subjected to numerous beatings and strip searches.
He was convicted of document fraud and deported to Pakistan but was cleared of any involvement in terrorism.
An Egyptian Muslim who was also part of the suit, Ehad Almaghraby, settled with the government for $300,000.
Similar suits are pending.
Iqbal’s case names prison guards, FBI agents, the warden of the prison — which was the subject of a critical report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general — up to Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time of the attack. Iqbal says policies formulated by Ashcroft and Mueller singled him out as a suspect of “high interest” solely because of his nationality and religion.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York acknowledged that top government officials carry immunity but decided it was at least “plausible” that Ashcroft and Mueller were responsible for, or at least knew about, the discriminatory actions Iqbal alleges. It said the suit could go forward with evidence-gathering from the lower-level officials in the case, and then a judge could decide whether there was reason to keep the two top officials in the suit.
