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Justice Department Misused Material Witness Law in Counterterrorism Efforts
NEW YORK – Operating behind a wall of secrecy, the U.S. Department of Justice thrust scores of Muslim men living in the United States into a Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charge and baseless accusations of terrorist links, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said in a report released today.
Following the September 11 attacks, the Justice Department held the 70 men – all but one Muslim – under a narrow federal law that permits the arrest and brief detention of “material witnesses” who have important information about a crime, if they might otherwise flee to avoid testifying before a grand jury or in court. Although federal officials suspected the men of involvement in terrorism, it held them as material witnesses, not criminal suspects.</i>
