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9/11 adds up to 1,780 days behind bars for one detainee
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| Parent(s) |
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| Contributor | Servo |
| Last Edited | Servo Oct 12, 2006 02:50pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - San Diego Union-Tribune |
| News Date | Thursday, August 17, 2006 08:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The date was Sept. 12, 2001, but Benemar “Ben” Benatta was clueless about the death and destruction that had unfolded a day earlier.
About a week before, Canadian officials had stopped Benatta as he entered the country from Buffalo to seek political asylum. On that Sept. 11, he was quietly transferred to a U.S. immigration lockup where a day passed before sullen FBI agents told him what the rest of the world already knew: Terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
It slowly dawned on Benatta that his pedigree – a Muslim man with a military background – made him a target in the frenzied national dragnet that soon followed. The FBI didn't accuse him of being a terrorist – at least not outright.
But agents kept asking if he could fly an airplane.
No, he said.
It made no difference.
“They gave me a feeling that I was Suspect No. 1,” he said in a recent interview.
The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years – despite official findings in 2001 that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody. |
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