According to an article in the International Herald Tribune today, six guys who were imprisoned without charges in New York City and eventually deported are returning to the States to sue the guards who beat them up when they were in prison, and also "top government officials". More on the flip.
This IHT article titled
September 11th detainees sue officals and guards says that four Egyptians, one Pakistani and one Brit are returning to sue not only the detention officials, but apparantly the government officials who gave the orders to round up lots of Muslims and throw them in jail without charges. Yasser and Hany Ibrahim, two of the four Egyptians who are suing, were in jail for more than eight months - September 30th, 2001, to May 29, 2002.
I see alot of similarities in what happened to these guys with what happened to Yasser Hamdi, with the obvious exception that Yasser Hamdi actually WAS a terrorist/enemy combatant/whatever, while these guys weren't.
As in the cases of all the Muslim immigrants rounded up in the New York area after the Sept. 11 attacks, the six were never accused of a crime related to terrorism. In fact, they were eventually cleared.
Robert Meuller and John Ashcroft are named in the suit, but the IHT article doesn't really say what the ramifications would be if these six guys win; whether there might be criminal investigations that could follow for assault or for kidnapping or whatever.