Former top U.S. officials can be held liable for the abuse of hundreds of detainees rounded up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for minor immigration violations, a federal appeals court said Wednesday, citing the importance of the rule of law even in times of crisis.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller and the former head of an agency that policed immigration may have exceeded the constitutional limits of their authority in the quest to find terrorists responsible for 9/11.
"Detaining individuals as if they were terrorists, in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available, simply because these individuals were, or appeared to be, Arab or Muslim exceeds those limits," according to the majority opinion co-written by Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard C. Wesley.