Consumer Law
DOJ Settles an Abuse Lawsuit by Men Who Were Detained After 9/11
The Justice Department on Tuesday settled a decades-old lawsuit filed by a group of men who were rounded up by the government in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and held in a federal jail in New York in conditions the department’s own watchdog called abusive and harsh.
The settlement announced Tuesday calls for a $98,000 payout to be paid out among the six men who filed the suit and were held without terrorism charges at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
The men — Ahmer Iqbal Abbasi, Anser Mehmood, Benamar Benatta, Ahmed Khalifa, Saeed Hammouda, and Purna Raj Bajracharya — said they were detained in restrictive conditions and, in some cases, abused by members of the staff.
