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Suspect Held 8 Months Without Seeing Judge (washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com -- A former Boston cab driver once identified by authorities as a major terrorism suspect was kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months here without seeing a judge or being assigned a lawyer, according to court records, lawyers and advocates familiar with the case. Nabil Almarabh, 35, was taken into custody Sept. 18. After routine detention proceedings, court records show, he was not brought before a federal magistrate to face charges until May 22, two weeks after he was interviewed by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, which is examining allegations of civil rights violations against detainees in New York and New Jersey jails. Last week, authorities transferred Almarabh from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to a Buffalo courtroom, where he was arraigned on charges stemming from an attempt to illegally enter the country last June. If he pleads guilty, Almarabh faces a sentence shorter than the term he has already spent in jail, according to the U.S. attorney for New York's Western District. Almarabh's case has provoked outrage among civil liberties advocates and criminal defense attorneys, who argue that it is one of the more extreme examples of how the government has violated the due process rights of hundreds of people swept up in the nationwide terrorism investigation. His eight months in custody represent possibly the longest period of time that any person detained after the Sept. 11 attacks has been denied access to a judicial proceeding.

posted by West 10:04 AM