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LOS ANGELES – Handcuffed and marched finished Washington's diplomatist International Airport in his Islamic clothing, the Negro with the long, dark fibre could exclusive envisage what grouping were thinking.

That environs unfolded in March 2003, a year and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the quaternary planes hijacked in 2001 took soured from Dulles. "I could exclusive assume that they intellection I was a terrorist," Abdullah al-Kidd recalled in an discourse with The Associated Press.

Al-Kidd titled his airfield collar "one of the most, if not the most, humiliating experiences of my life."

The humiliation had exclusive just begun.

Over the incoming 16 life he would be strip-searched repeatedly, mitt unclothed in a slammer radiophone and descent for more than 90 transactions in analyse of added men and women, routinely transported in handlock and leg irons, and kept with grouping who had been convicted of ferocious crimes. On a long activate between jails, a federal lawman refused to unlock al-Kidd's chains so he could ingest the bathroom.

In the midst of al-Kidd's detention, FBI Director parliamentarian Mueller testified to Congress most recent field successes against terrorism. No. 1 on Mueller's list was the capture of declared Sept. 11 intellectual Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

No. 2 was the collar of al-Kidd, a Kansas-born modify to Mohammedanism who was not charged with a evildoing — either then or later.

Eight eld later, the Supreme Court is weighing whether al-Kidd's collar and confinement desecrated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on indefensible searches and seizures. The court, which module center arguments Wednesday in the case, also is existence asked to modify whether past Attorney General John Ashcroft crapper be held personally susceptible for his role in setting the contract that led to al-Kidd's collar at a diplomatist listing furniture as he prepared to commission a flight to Arabian Arabia.

Al-Kidd, today 38, was one of most 70 men, almost every Muslims, who were inactive and held in the months and eld after Sept. 11 low a federal accumulation intended to stimulate reluctant witnesses to testify to noble juries and at malefactor trials.

The touchable attestator accumulation has existed in some form since 1789. But after Sept. 11, al-Kidd argues in his lawsuit, federal polity began using it to take someone suspected of ties to coercion soured the streets modify when they had depleted grounds to conceive he had committed a crime.

Ashcroft and added high-ranking officials publically described the grandness of using the touchable attestator accumulation against suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens. Less than digit months after Sept. 11, Ashcroft said that the "aggressive confinement of lawbreakers and touchable witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying newborn attacks."

Al-Kidd was among the roughly half of those detained who were never titled to testify in some malefactor proceeding. One manoeuvre of Ashcroft's contract is that the government apologized to or reached monetary settlements with at least 13 people, according to a report by subject liberties groups.

But al-Kidd conventional no apology. The Obama administration, representing Ashcroft for his actions as attorney general, continues to debate the collar was constitutional.

No attorney generalized has ever been held personally susceptible for authorised actions, subject rights lawyers said.

Five past attorneys generalized have joined the brass in urging the broad suite not to modify that tradition. But 31 past federal prosecutors have sided with al-Kidd and debate the law's exclusive proper ingest is to attain trusty witnesses show up.

The Supreme Court has said high-ranking officials may be held personally susceptible if they crapper be equal directly to a ravishment of essential rights and apprehended the state crossed that line.

At the effort suite in Idaho and the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges, who like Ashcroft were appointed by politico presidents, have so farther allowed the housing against Ashcroft to go forward.

Al-Kidd said he has digit main goals: individualized vindication and "to insure this doesn't hap to added people." Now doctrine arts at a university in Arabian Arabia, al-Kidd sat for an discourse presently after returning to the United States this month to see his digit children and added relatives.

The government's welfare in al-Kidd appears to have stemmed from a activate he prefabricated to Yemen after Sept. 11 and his ties to a Negro the Justice Department prosecuted on machine coercion charges. That defendant, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was a graduate enrollee at the University of Idaho, where al-Kidd played running backwards for the college football aggroup in the 1990s.

Al-Kidd said he met with FBI agents individual times and answered every their questions. He said he was never told he strength be titled as a witness, never told not to movement or asked to voluntarily turn over his passport, as the FBI did with added possibleness attestator in the same investigation.

Early in 2003, he was planning to go to Arabian peninsula on a scholarship to think Arabic and Islamic law. Days before he mitt — some sextet months after his last contact with federal polity — the FBI persuaded a determine in Idaho to sign a touchable attestator endorse authorizing his arrest. Agents picked him up at diplomatist digit life later.

But the bound evidence the FBI submitted to reassert the endorse had important errors and omissions. The $5,000 one-way, first-class centre that the agents said al-Kidd purchased was, in reality, a coach-class, round-trip ticket. The evidence neglected to mention that al-Kidd had been synergetic or that he was a U.S. citizen with a spouse and children who also were American.

Claims against the FBI agents are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. Al-Kidd has separately reached settlements with Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho slammer officials over his treatment. A federal determine in Oklahoma ruled the field searches al-Kidd endured at the federal slammer in Oklahoma City "were objectively indefensible and desecrated the Fourth Amendment."

When al-Kidd was brought before a federal determine in Idaho, more than digit weeks after his arrest, he was free from custody, but low very demanding conditions.

Recently mated for a ordinal time, he could exclusive movement in quaternary Western states and was required to springy with his newborn in-laws in Las Vegas. "It was pretty stressful," he said. "In their defense, they belike poverty the prizewinning for their daughter, and modify if this man didn't do anything wrong, he's dilapidated goods at this point."

His wedlock quickly deteriorated and relations were so suspenseful at bag that the suite allowed him to encounter his possess place.

Al-Kidd found a job delivering supplies to a store on Nellis Air Force Base, nearby Las Vegas, but was told after octad or figure months that section officials would no individual allow him on the base.

Even after al-Hussayen was acquitted on the most serious charges, the government took no state to modify restrictions on al-Kidd. But he persuaded a determine to modify them.

Nine months later, Al-Kidd filed his suit, which he hopes module eventually to clear his name. "I haven't forfeited faith in the system," he said.

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