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Detained for years but never charged
Lawsuit by witness held in Vegas could affect government actions
Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Beyond the Sun
- The Washington Post: Court Allows Lawsuit Against Ashcroft (9-5-2009)
- The Huffington Post: John Ashcroft Can Be Sued For Post-9/11 Detentions, Court Rules (9-4-2009)
Many people wanted by authorities come to Las Vegas to hide. Abdullah al-Kidd came here so the federal government could keep an eye on him.
For about three years he lived here, much of it under house arrest, in his wife’s parents’ home while federal lawyers in Idaho prosecuted a suspected Islamic terrorist. Al-Kidd was supposed to be a star witness in that trial, and he was told to remain in Las Vegas until he was called to testify.
As he waited, his marriage slowly unraveled. His job with a defense contractor at Nellis Air Force Base fell apart. He had to surrender his passport. He even routinely reported to a probation officer, even though he was never charged with a crime.
Finally, after never being called to testify in a trial that ended in acquittal anyway, al-Kidd left town. Today, a divorced father, he lives abroad. But his name is generating new controversy: A federal appeals court has ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft could be held personally responsible for wrongly detaining him as a material trial witness.
The ruling, won in a lawsuit filed by al-Kidd, could significantly change how the government fights the war on terror in this country. If officials are held personally liable for violating the constitutional rights of innocent people, government might think twice about future arrests.
In the weeks and months after the 9/11 terror attacks on the East Coast, government agents swept up countless people and held them indefinitely on material witness warrants. Many caught up in the dragnets were undocumented immigrants who were then deported.
Al-Kidd, however, was born in Wichita, Kan. He later starred as a running back for the University of Idaho football team. His arrest changed everything.
“He was very scared, he was angry, he was emotionally devastated,” his attorney, Lee Gelernt of the ACLU in New York, said in an interview Wednesday. “He also was confused about why this would happen to him.”
He was born Lavoni T. Kidd but changed his name after embracing Islam. In Idaho, he and his wife, Nadine Zegura, befriended Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a graduate student there. When Al-Hussayen was arrested for visa fraud and making false statements to authorities, al-Kidd began cooperating with the FBI.
But when he left Idaho in March 2003 to continue his Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia, the FBI arrested him en route — at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
Fearing he was trying to slip out of the country rather than provide “crucial” information about the Al-Hussayen case, they held him on a material witness warrant. That meant they could detain him until the Al-Hussayen trial was over, or at least until he testified.
Nancy H. Wiegand, associate general counsel of the Justice Department, would later say in court papers that there was “no evidence of negligence or a wrongful act or omission” by the federal government in detaining al-Kidd.
According to al-Kidd’s lawsuit, he was taken to a small, two-man cell in Alexandria, Va. He slept on the floor, curled up near the toilet — when it was not clogged and overflowing.
A week later he was moved to the federal prison transfer center in Oklahoma City. He said his hands and legs were cuffed, and a chain was wrapped around his waist and ankles. His hands were placed in a padlocked box.
They flew him on “Con Air” with 100 other federal detainees. In Oklahoma he was strip-searched, he said, and kept naked for long periods in his holding cell.
Then he was taken to the Ada County Jail in Boise, Idaho. He was placed in a cell with a glass wall infested with ants. He said they let him out just one hour a day.
In Washington at the time, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller was testifying before separate Senate and House committees, and cited al-Kidd among the biggest arrests in the war on terror, along with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind. Mueller noted that al-Kidd had been stopped “en route to Saudi Arabia.”
Fifteen days after al-Kidd’s arrest, a federal judge in Idaho ordered him released into the custody of his wife, then living at her parents’ home in Las Vegas. But, he later told the judge, his “living conditions had become unbearable” and he and his wife were separating. He was permitted to live alone in Las Vegas, and moved to an apartment on Decatur Boulevard.
Prosecutors never called him to testify in the Al-Hussayen trial, and in June 2004, Al-Hussayen was acquitted. The government then lifted the conditions on al-Kidd’s house arrest.
Nevertheless, he was fired from his job as an employee of a government contractor after being denied a security clearance due to his arrest. Unable to find steady employment, his marriage dissolving, al-Kidd left Las Vegas in 2006, and eventually the United States altogether.
In 2005, in U.S. District Court in Idaho, he sued top Washington officials, including Ashcroft and Mueller, and the three jail wardens for his mistreatment at their facilities. He sought to hold them personally responsible for his ordeal.
The claims against the wardens have been settled, with monetary compensation and agreements to change the rules on how some prisoners are treated. The case against the Washington officials was moving toward requests for summary judgments against the government when Ashcroft separately appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. He argued he should not be personally held liable.
On Sept. 4 the appellate court ruled against Ashcroft and said the former attorney general could indeed be personally forced to pay if al-Kidd’s lawsuit prevails.
The appellate court also stressed that in the more than six years since his arrest, “No evidence of criminal activity by al-Kidd was ever discovered.”
Discussion: 18 comments so far…
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Reporter Serrano - thanks for reporting this. There are hundreds of false arrests in Las Vegas every year due to the courts not recording in real time. That is, the computers go down and payment of a parking ticket doesn't show paid and an arrest warrant is issued.
The lifetime effects of an arrest can be devastating to a law abiding taxpayer. YOUR RIGHT! 702-787-0002
Court documents elaborate on the detainment. FBI agent, Scott Mace (still working for the FBI in Montana), fueled the false arrest of Lavoni T. Kidd.
"The Mace Report" states Mr. Kidd purchased a $5,000 first class, one way ticket to Saudi Arabia insinuating funds came from Al-Hussayen. Mr. Kidd purchased a round trip ticket for $1700 in coach.
John Ashcroft used the falsified "Mace Report" to have Mr Kidd arrested thinking he would not be returning to the U.S. for a future trial.
The Mace Report is not the only known falsified FBI document. We have evidece of many falsified FBI documents. Many are generated from the FBI Las Vegas field office.
The Sun is reporting the favorable judgments for "Terrorist" Lavoni T. Kidd.
The RJ is reporting the State of Nevada Director of Homeland Security is resigning.
Hmmmmmm.
YOUR RIGHT! 702-787-0002
This is just another story about all the illegal activities under Bushie and his chronies.
They should all be tried for treason, because that is what they did.
The FBI has long been known to keep rogue agents on their payroll such as the agent mentioned in this story. The sitting president has little or no control over the actions of these rouge agents nor are they able to fire them.
I seem to recall not to long ago, an agent was caught soliciting sex from underage boys at a local walmart parking lot for example.
Let's hope that this is a step in the right direction.
Many more need to be taken to ensure justice for all.
dwms -- good job throwing Mace into the mix here.
Besides showing the rampant prejudice against someone with and Islamic name, it's also a good look into the actual workings of a "terrorist" case. This man apparently was just doing his patriotic duty as a material witness but was treated like a criminal. He deserves every penny he can get out of them.
Then there's the case of Brandon Mayfield, that attorney in Oregon accused of terrorism based on a badly botched FBI investigation. It showed even the Spanish police do a better job than our feds.
And the most outrageous of all, Jose Padilla, one of those U.S. citizens Bush promised would never be detained by the military. Locked up for months in a Navy brig, his attorney had extremely limited access to him. When a court finally forced the feds to bring him before it, he had been tortured so severely he could not even help his own defenders.
A glimmer of hope from the 9th Circuit -- Ashcroft nailed, not just the rank and file. Too bad the courts don't charge then convict these perpetrators with the crimes they're guilty of -- but like all our rulers, they take care of their own. Now that would be justice.
Wrong.... Just wrong for what they did to this man - I'd love to see the results of this case...
To help create order in our thinking about liberty and just human conduct, here's an excellent link _ http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?opt...
A century and a half ago a Frenchman made this comment about America -- "...here the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property."
How far We have allowed our government to fall.
Everyone should read this, then follow the link and read Bastiat's "The Law," then come back here and post accordingly.
By the way, the link above is from an economist. Like Bastiat, not an attorney.
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart (1791)
As "The People" slowly opened their eyes to the realization that it wasn't the Husseins', the Bin Ladens', the Al-Kidds' that were their terrorists after all but rather the Ashcrofts', the Wiegands' and the Muellers' that hid the truth.
: (
witeizrite -- its one thing to be ignorant and stupid, its quite another to keep posting your proof.
It's called freedom, you bigoted buffoon.
I guess witezrite doesn't believe in the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, an injustice to one human (a even a stranger) means that we can all be subject to be detained, held, loss of work, because of a name. ridiculous, but then again I understand why Animal Farm is recommended reading. " We are all equal, our freedoms are guaranteed..." yeah right until fear rules the ignorant mind
May 2005, an investigation by the feds was launched in the Las Vegas Valley because of complaints of a heavily white supremist movement.
This is not a comment on white supremacy. This is a comment on the population of Las Vegas.
witeizrite -- no insult or rebuttal to you could say it better than your own words.
"Leave America to the actual Americans." The only "actual Americans" were slaughtered and their survivors forced onto reservations.
Ain't free speech a wonderful thing?
witeizrite -- like I said, nobody says it better than you.
You've shown your posts are completely irrelevant to this or any other Discussion. Expect to be snubbed.