By Camille T. Taiara

IF THERE'S ONE example that most closely parallels the gruesome scenes at U.S. detention centers abroad, it's U.S. authorities' treatment of terrorist suspects at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, following Sept. 11, 2001.

During an 11-month period ending in August 2002, the federal government used the facility to house 84 out of a total of 762 Muslim and Arab immigrant men designated as "high interest" detainees. None of the "high interest" detainees were ever found to have any connection to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Civil liberties advocates charge that the Federal Bureau of Investigation singled out suspects for arrest based largely on their ethnicity and religious affiliation rather than on evidence of actual links to terrorism. As a result, innocent persons were subjected to inexcusable physical and psychological abuse at the hands of the U.S. government.

"What we saw [at both Abu Ghraib and the Brooklyn MDC] was a dangerous combination of individuals held on the basis of collective guilt, under the care of guards who believed them to be terrorists, and relaxed rules governing the conditions of their detention," Nancy Chang, senior litigation attorney at New York City's Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Bay Guardian.

News of the resulting abuses became public thanks to an investigation by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General into detention conditions at the Brooklyn MDC and the Passaic County Jail in Paterson, New Jersey. The OIG published its results in two reports: one issued in April 2003 and another issued in December – after the OIG discovered more than 300 videotapes stored at the Brooklyn MDC that the Bureau of Prisons had repeatedly denied possessing.

We may never know the true extent of the mistreatment suffered by detainees at the Brooklyn MDC. The OIG itself stated that the most egregious abuses alleged by detainees took place during the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks – and "dropped off precipitously after video cameras were introduced" on or around Oct. 5 as the result of one detainee's complaint to a judge.

Even so, the OIG reports paint a disturbing picture.

'These colors don't run'

After Sept. 11, the BOP modified a wing of the Brooklyn MDC. The wing was labeled "administrative maximum special housing unit," or ADMAX SHU, and was created solely for the purpose of housing the "high interest" suspects under the most restrictive of conditions.

The detainees spent 23 hours a day in their cells, which were constantly illuminated until February 2002. For weeks, they told investigators, officers would bang on their cell doors throughout the night to deprive them of sleep.

Detainees were handcuffed behind their backs and shackled at their ankles anytime they left their cells. During visits – conducted in "non-contact" rooms, in which inmates were separated from their visitors by a clear partition – their ankles and wrists were cuffed and connected to their waist by chains. Except while in their cells, the inmates were escorted by three guards and a lieutenant at all times.

The physical abuse began the moment the men arrived: for months, MDC staff kept a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag and the words "these colors don't run" pinned up on the wall in the MDC's ground-floor receiving area. According to numerous accounts, guards would slam detainees up against the T-shirt, often pressing their faces into the wall and making threatening comments. One lieutenant confirmed he'd seen blood on the T-shirt and "stated some of the bloodstains looked like a couple of bloody noses smudged in a row, and other stains looked like someone with blood in his mouth spit on the t-shirt," the inspector general wrote in his December 2003 report.

The OIG found that MDC staff regularly "slammed" and "bounced" compliant detainees off walls while escorting them to and from their cells. "Some officers ... bounced them against the wall every time they could get away with it," the same lieutenant testified.

According to numerous testimonials and videotape evidence, MDC staff also grabbed detainees by the head and neck and pressed their faces and chests into walls; twisted their fingers, wrists, and arms in painful ways – at times causing the victims to walk on their toes from the pain; purposefully applied restraints too tightly; stepped on their leg chains in such a way as to injure the inmates' ankles or make them fall; pulled their arms up behind their backs while cuffed; lifted detainees off the floor by their restraints; and, in at least one case, allegedly dragged an inmate along the floor all the way from the ground-level receiving area to his cell on the ninth floor. This despite the fact that "nearly all of the staff members ... interviewed stated that the detainees were compliant."

The inspector general also concluded that MDC staff punished detainees by leaving them in restraints for hours on end and conducting unnecessary strip searches – in full view of other inmates and of female staff. "One detainee alleged that in late October 2001 staff members punished him twice for talking too much by stripping him, giving him only a sleeveless t-shirt, and locking him in a cell for 24 hours without food or blankets," the inspector general wrote. "A second detainee stated he saw officers put the first detainee in [a] cell with no clothes or blankets, and throw water on the cell floor."

Some inmates told investigators they were punched, kicked, and otherwise beaten – allegations the OIG was unable to confirm.

Nearly two dozen detainees also charged that they were subjected to constant insults and threats by MDC staff, who often referred to them as "terrorists"; made derogatory comments during strip searches; told them things like "Whatever you did at the World Trade Center, we will do to you," "I'm going to break your face if you breathe or move at all," and "You're never going to be able to see your family again"; and threatened to place them in the penitentiary with convicted murderers.

"The statements seemed to be calculated to make them lose hope of ever leaving the facility," attorney Chang said.

Given that they were being held incommunicado and without charges, the notion couldn't have seemed far-fetched.

Systemic abuse

Activists agree that the conditions under which post-Sept. 11 detainees were apprehended and held at the Brooklyn MDC represent some of the most egregious examples of systemic civil and human rights abuses suffered by Muslim and Arab immigrants in the United States over the past few years. But they also say it was by no means an isolated case.

The federal government has a long and sordid history of abusing immigration laws to lock up individuals without evidence of criminal wrongdoing and engaging in racial profiling.

Bay Guardian interviews and research found widespread abuses that include immigrant detainees being housed with violent criminals, cells that are purposefully too cold, sleep deprivation, inadequate access to medical care, Muslims being fed only pork products, Sikhs being made to remove their turbans, lack of access to attorneys and basic legal information, and regular transfers from one detention center to another without informing family or attorneys.

"I've heard of all those things happening," Omar Jadwat, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrant Rights Project in Washington, D.C., told us. "It makes a vulnerable population more vulnerable.... If those persons get abused or mistreated, it's not a situation that's likely to [come to light or] get fixed."

Advocates say that while immigration and prison officials, and their bosses in the executive branch, continue to enjoy immunity, these abuses will continue.