SCOTUS: Detainee Can’t Sue US Officials For Abuse (UPDATED)

A  Pakistani man claiming abuse while in a New York prison has been denied permission to sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.  The Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling in a case brought by Javid Iqbal who was in jail for more than a year after 9/11.

Iqbal, a Muslim, said in the lawsuit that he had suffered verbal and physical abuse, including unnecessary strip searches and brutal beatings by guards. He said he had been singled out because of unlawful ethnic and religious discrimination.

Iqbal’s was accused of providing material support to terrorism by mkaing Lebanese Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV available by satellite in the US, working from his home in Staten Island.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: The below case involves a man with the same name as the one in the case above but they are not related.

Iqbal was a small-time businessman. His satellite packages provided Christian broadcasting stations and sex channels alongside Hezbollah’s propaganda. To claim that he was somehow an implant disseminating hate or recruiting terrorists is as far-fetched as claiming that Staten Island is an outpost of al-Qaeda terrorism.

“He did all this,” federal prosecutor Eric Snyder said of Iqbal, “to bring the Hezbollah operations to our shores, to allow Hezbollah to have their operations here in New York City. That’s a very dangerous thing. That’s what this crime is about.”

But whether he’s a real threat to the United States or a small time businessman who made a mistake with no ill intent, his right to take action has been denied.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.