NEW YORK ' In the first case of its kind, a Jordanian student will try to persuade a federal judge here Friday that authorities illegally detained him, physically abused him and coerced him into committing perjury as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks.
The case of Osama Awadallah, 21, is the first serious legal challenge by a detainee claiming abuse by the government in its post-Sept. 11 investigation. His claim is being monitored closely by civil liberty advocates who contend that the government has violated the rights of hundreds of detainees since the attacks, in many cases holding immigrants indefinitely on minor charges, denying them attorneys and holding them in secret locations.
Awadallah, a Palestinian who was born in Venezuela and raised in Jordan, was initially detained Sept. 21 as a material witness in the government's terrorism investigation. After testifying twice before a grand jury the following month, he was indicted on two counts of perjury for allegedly lying when he denied knowing the name of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar.
Al-Midhar's first name was found in an entry in a journal Awadallah kept for an English-as-a-second language course at a San Diego community college. FBI agents seized the journal after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
On Jan. 31, Shira Sheindlin, a federal judge in Manhattan, granted the hearing into allegations that Awadallah may have been \a victim of coercion and intimidation.""
Investigators discovered a piece of paper with Awadallah's first name and home phone number in a car abandoned at Dulles International Airport by the hijackers who slammed a plane into the Pentagon.
After 20 FBI agents converged on him in the street outside his San Diego home, Awadallah was questioned and subsequently detained at four different jails, including New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center. He claims that a guard there pushed him into a wall while he was handcuffed, drawing blood, and yanked his hair to force him to face the American flag.
