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U.S. Agrees to Pay Egyptian Man $300K For Post-9/11 Detention
in Unprecedented Settlement
How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your
Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification
U.S. Agrees to Pay Egyptian Man $300K For Post-9/11
Detention in Unprecedented Settlement
The U.S. government has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle
a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian man who spent several months
in U.S. detention even though he had been cleared of terror
charges. Ehab Elmaghraby was one of over 100 Muslim men rounded
up and detained after the 9/11 attacks. According to a lawsuit,
he was repeatedly beaten and abused by prison guards. We go
to Egypt to speak with Elmaghraby and we are joined by two
of his attorneys.
The U.S. has government has agreed to pay an Egyptian man
$300,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging that the man was illegally
detained during the round-up of hundreds of Arab and Muslim
men inside the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The man, Ehab Elmaghraby, was detained on Sept. 30, 2001.
Federal agents came to his apartment in Queens New York in
search of his landlord who - years earlier - had applied for
pilot training. Even though he wasn't the original target
of the investigation, Elmaghraby was detained. He would spend
nearly the next year in jail at the Metropolitan Detention
Center in Brooklyn.
In the end, Elmaghraby was deported after pleading guilty
to the white-collar crime of credit card fraud. But for his
year in detention he was treated like a wanted terrorist.
He was kept in a maximum security section of the jail reserved
almost exclusively for Muslim or Arab men. Conditions were
so bad that the New York Daily News described the site as
"Brooklyn's
Abu Ghraib."
According to a lawsuit filed by Elmaghraby, he was beaten
by prison guards. Threatened with death. Accused of being
a terrorist. Repeatedly stripped search. Dragged on the ground
while chained and shackled. Denied basic necessities like
a mattress, pillow and toilet paper.
In one instance, he accused, a prison guard of making him
bleed after a guard inserted a flashlight into him rectum.
At other times they used pencils.
Elmaghraby wasn't alone in claiming abuse inside the Metropolitan
Detention Center. Two years ago the Justice Department's Inspector
General Glenn Fine issued a damning report implicating 20
guards in carrying out widespread abuse against the jailed
men.
The report read, "Some officers slammed and bounced
detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in
painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished
them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time."
The government actually videotaped much of the abuse but
has so far resisted calls for it to be publicly released.
However the public has seen images from the video showing
the prison guards beating detainees.
The $300,000 settlement is believed to mark the first time
the government has agreed to pay out money to a Muslim or
Arab man jailed in the post 9/11 sweeps. Other lawsuits remain
pending in court.
- Ehab Elmaghraby, Egyptian citizen who was detained in
New York City shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks and spent
nearly a year in jail. According to his lawsuit he was shackled
and kicked and punched until he bled. He was subjected to
multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one
in which correction officers inserted a flashlight into
his rectum, making him bleed. He joins us on the phone from
Alexandria, Egypt.
How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track
your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification
We speak with Liz McIntyre, author of "Spychips: How
Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every
Move with RFID" that examines radio frequency identification
- a technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items
at distance. Major corporations are working right now to install
RFIDs on all consumer products. What about in you arm? Or
in your kids? We also speak with freelance journalist Annalee
Newitz who recently had an RFID implanted in her arm.
"Imagine a world of no more privacy.
"Where your every purchase is monitored and recorded
in a database, and your every belonging is numbered. Where
someone many states away or perhaps in another country has
a record of everything you have ever bought, of everything
you have ever owned, of every item of clothing in your closet
-- every pair of shoes. What's more, these items can even
be tracked remotely.
"Once your every possession is recorded in a database
and can be tracked, you can also be tracked and monitored
remotely through the things you wear, carry and interact with
every day.
"We may be standing on the brink of that terrifying
world if global corporations and government agencies have
their way. It's the world that Wal-Mart, Target, Gillette,
Procter & Gamble, Kraft, IBM, and even the United States
Postal Service want to usher in within the next ten years.
"It's the world of radio frequency identification.
"Radio frequency identification, RFID for short, is
a technology that uses tiny computer chips -- some smaller
than a grain of sand -- to track items at distance. If the
master planners have their way, every object -- from shoes
to cars -- will carry one of these tiny computer chips that
can be used to spy on you without your knowledge or consent."
Those are the opening words of the book, "Spychips:
How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every
Move with RFID." Today we are joined by one of the co-authors
of "Spychips" - Liz McIntyre.
- Liz McIntyre, a consumer privacy expert and author of
"Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan
to Track your Every Move with RFID." She serves as
the Communications Director for CASPIAN
(Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering),
a grass-roots organization that has been tackling consumer
privacy issues since 1999. She also writes about consumer
issues as the MoneyMom, a syndicated family money writer
and columnist.
- Website: Spychips.com
- Annalee Newitz, freelance journalist. She writes about
the intersection of technology science and culture and is
a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. She recently had
an RFID implanted in her arm.
- Website: Techsploitation.com
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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