Systematic Mistreatment of Muslim inmates in US Prison cited
The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General said yesterday it had ''found a disturbing pattern of discriminatory and retaliatory actions against Muslim inmates" by the warden and guards at an unnamed federal prison, one in a series of criticisms the internal watchdog leveled against the federal Bureau of Prisons in connection with its treatment of Muslims. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also disclosed that an FBI agent sent an e-mail to field offices ''identifying the names and addresses of the proprietors and customers of a Muslim-based website," along with instructions to ''take whatever action it deemed appropriate" against any local people on the list. The FBI later conceded the e-mail was probably illegal, he said. The report was the latest in a series of semiannual reviews of civil rights and civil liberties violations required by a provision of the USA Patriot Act, the law enforcement powers enacted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The new report comes a year after Fine disclosed that guards had beaten and verbally abused some of the hundreds of Muslim detainees swept up on immigration charges by the FBI after the Sept. 11 attacks and held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. None of the detainees was found to have a connection to the attacks. [more]