Witness to Abuse - Human Rights Watch

Detaining Witnesses Who Cooperate with the Government
Before their arrest, more than two-thirds of the material witnesses arrested in connection
with post-September 11 counterterrorism investigations had either initiated contact with
the FBI or, when asked, had readily agreed to be interviewed. Awadallah is one of
numerous witnesses who, prior to their arrests, had agreed to multiple interviews that
lasted hours and consented to the government’s requests to search their property. They
have been taken by surprise by their arrests, because the officers who arrested them had
been friendly and thankful for their cooperation just hours earlier. Although most of the
documents remain under seal, the accounts of witnesses and their lawyers suggest that
the government has largely been relying on the magnitude of the crimes to which the
witnesses were allegedly connected in order to detain them.
Eyad Mustafa Alrababah
Eyad Mustafa Alrababah went to the FBI office in Bridgeport, Connecticut on
September 29, 2001, to inform authorities that he had recognized four of the alleged
hijackers whose pictures were shown on television. He told the FBI agents that in March
2001 he had met the men at his Connecticut mosque, hosted them at his home, and in
June 2001, drove them from Virginia to Connecticut. He had not seen them since then
and had no prior knowledge of the attacks. After two FBI agents questioned Alrababah
at an FBI office, they arrested him as a material witness later the same day, shackling him
and taking him to the Hartford Correctional Center, where he was held for about twenty
days. At the detention facility, Alrababah was placed in isolation and was strip - and
cavity-searched at least once a week. Alrababah was not brought before a judge until a
month after his arrest. 234 He was never called to testify in any criminal proceeding.
Mujahid Menepta
Mujahid Menepta, who attended the same mosque as Zaccarias Moussaoui in Norman,
Oklahoma, voluntarily met and talked with the government three times in September
and October 2001 before the government arrested him as a material witness on October
10, 2001. Menepta, a sixty-year-old U.S. citizen and convert to Islam with two U.S.
citizen sons, had stepped forward to talk to the press that had gathered outside his
mosque after September 11 because he wanted to protect the younger Muslims, many of
234
Human Rights Watch interview with Eyad Mustafa Alrababah, City Jail, Alexandria, Virginia, February 5,
2002; HRW/ACLU telephone interview with Ardra Doherty, Eyad Mustafa Alrababah's fiancée, Nutley, New
Jersey, January 15, 2002. When Alrababah asked why he was detained, agents told him: “You’re a protected
witness.” But he was not given any document that detailed any charges against him or that stated that he was a
material witness. He was not allowed to make any phone calls from the detention center but did telephone his
fiancée, a U.S. citizen, a few times from the FBI office where he was taken for interrogations. See also
“Presumption of Guilt”.
71 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 17, NO. 2(G)