One man still locked up from 9/11 sweeps

Immigration violation charges issued
Here's what is known: 762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.

Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.

There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.

As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.

"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's Gelernt.

The repercussions are still being felt, say advocates.

"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."

"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"

In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.

The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue to work toward the development of formal joint policies and approaches for the handling of such national security cases during periods of national impact," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

Rights decided case-by-case
However, Boyd stressed that guidelines were set up in 2004 to make sure detainees' rights are being protected on a case-by-case basis.

"We learned from the past," he said. "We evaluate each situation to make sure it's being handled fairly."

Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.

"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."

When the AP wrote Ali Partovi to ask for an interview, he called collect from the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run detention center in Arizona where he is held. Adamantly, he said he did not want to be interviewed and that he wanted to remain private, even though he said understood his case files, including litigation he files himself, are part of the public record.

He later reportedly told a public affairs officer at the facility that he is too busy for an interview — perhaps preparing his many legal appeals.

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