Former Attorney General John Ashcroft said he makes "no apologies" for finding every legal way to protect the public, which includes anally-raping suspects with flashlights until their asses bleed.
This didn't happen in far away Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, suspects held in a federal detention facility in Brooklyn were shackled and then kicked and punched until they bled, a practice known as "torture". Guards also anally-raped one Egyptian man named Ehab Elmaghraby with a flashlight and tore him a new one. He was just awarded a $300,000 settlement from the federal government after he sued the government and won.
Many of the abuses were videotaped on prison cameras, and have been documented in a recently-released 2003 report made by the Justice Department's inspector general.
Mr. Elmaghraby was originally picked up because his landlord, who is also a Muslim, had applied for pilot's training many years prior to 9/11. When his wife, an American citizen, arrived at his first court hearing, an F.B.I. agent threatened to arrest her as well. Rather than be arrested, she left Elmaghraby.
Of the 762 known suspects who were rounded up and held in the detention center after 9/11, all have been cleared by the F.B.I. -- none were linked to terrorist activity. Of course clearing them didn't happen quickly -- it took more than a year to straighten out the snafu.
