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Published on Sunday, October 14, 2001 in the St Petersburg (FL) Times
FBI Abuses Witness Detention
by Robyn Blumner
..... What we know of the department's recent use of its material witness powers is from personal accounts, from the men who have been arrested and later freed. Their experiences tell us the department isn't bothering to follow the rules.
One situation we've all heard of by now is the celebrated case of Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, the 34-year-old Saudi Arabian doctor living in San Antonio, who had FBI agents show up at his door at 5 a.m. on Sept. 12. He was incarcerated for nearly two weeks as a material witness. He was first taken to a local jail, then flown to a federal jail in Manhattan and later transferred to a Brooklyn facility.
Al-Hazmi's story is a frightening reminder of what happens when law enforcement believes its cause is so just that it claims the right to operate outside the bounds of due process.
Cynthia Orr, Al-Hazmi's San Antonio-based attorney, said that other than a few-minute phone call to her client when he was first picked up, Al-Hazmi was denied access to a lawyer for six days. During that time, Orr said, she literally couldn't find him. The government refused to tell her where it had taken him. (Is this sounding vaguely like a dirty war in Argentina?) Meanwhile, the FBI repeatedly tried to question Al-Hazmi outside her presence.
After 13 days in jail, 13 days of a disrupted life, 13 days of humiliation and 13 days of fear that guards might attack him because of his appearance, he was released. It came with no apology and no explanation, just with a Justice Department statement that "he's been cleared."
Cleared? Cleared of what? This man wasn't a suspect, he was a witness. And what are we doing putting witnesses in jail? There are plenty of less intrusive options, from attaching an ankle bracelet to holding people in secured hotel rooms, that would serve to keep track of people with special information without the punishing element of jail.
Also, one would think that before someone could be arrested as a reluctant witness, he or she would have to show, you know, some reluctance. Al-Hazmi's actions suggested just the opposite. He was completely cooperative, having allowed the FBI, without a warrant, to search his house for five hours and to speak with him at length.
And there are more like him. In Florida, Ahmed Badawi, a business man from Egypt who became an American citizen 18 years ago, was also arrested as a material witness after fully cooperating with the FBI. Also without asking for a warrant, Badawi gave agents his business records and three computers, and spoke with them for hours. Badawi was luckier than Al-Hazmi, though. He was allowed to contact an attorney the morning after his arrest and as a result, only spent three fear-filled nights in jail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1014-03.htm