Opinion ID: 3065072
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ashcroft

Text: Defendant-Appellant Ashcroft was Attorney General of the United States during the relevant time period. According to al-Kidd’s complaint, following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Ashcroft developed and promulgated a policy by which the FBI and DOJ would use the federal material witness statute5 as a pretext “to arrest and detain terrorism sus- 4 Al-Hussayen was not convicted of any of the charges brought against him. His trial ended in acquittal on the most serious charges, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2339A, 2339B. After the jury failed to reach a verdict on the remaining lesser charges, the district court declared a mistrial. The government agreed not to retry Al-Hussayen and deported him to Saudi Arabia for visa violations. 5 The federal material witness statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3144, provides: If it appears from an affidavit filed by a party that the testimony AL-KIDD v. ASHCROFT 12275 pects about whom they did not have sufficient evidence to arrest on criminal charges but wished to hold preventatively or to investigate further.” (Cited in, and emphasis added, in al-Kidd’s complaint.) To support this allegation, the complaint first quotes Ashcroft’s own statement at a press briefing: Today, I am announcing several steps that we are taking to enhance our ability to protect the United States from the threat of terrorist aliens. These measures form one part of the department’s strategy to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street . . . Aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks. John Ashcroft, Attorney General, Attorney General Ashcroft Outlines Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force (Oct. 31, 2001), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/archive/ag/ speeches/2001/agcrisisremarks10_31.htm (emphasis added in complaint). The complaint also cites internal DOJ memoranda quoted in a report by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG Report),6 which describe the use of “aggressive of a person is material in a criminal proceeding, and if it is shown that it may become impracticable to secure the presence of the person by subpoena, a judicial officer may order the arrest of the person and treat the person in accordance with the provisions of section 3142 of this title. No material witness may be detained because of inability to comply with any condition of release if the testimony of such witness can adequately be secured by deposition, and if further detention is not necessary to prevent a failure of justice. Release of a material witness may be delayed for a reasonable period of time until the deposition of the witness can be taken pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. 6 See Office of the Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep’t of Justice, The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration 12276 AL-KIDD v. ASHCROFT arrest and detention tactics in the war on terror,” OIG Report at 12, including the use of material witness warrants to confine aliens suspected of terrorist involvement, id. at 38-39, 75. The complaint also quotes the public statements of a number of DOJ and White House officials implying or stating outright that suspects were being held under material witness warrants as an alternative means of investigative arrest or preventative detention. In addition to this direct evidence, the complaint cites a number of press reports describing the detention of numerous Muslim individuals under material witness warrants. The complaint further alleges that the policies designed and promulgated by Ashcroft have caused individuals to be “impermissibly arrested and detained as material witnesses even though there was no reason to believe it would have been impracticable to secure their testimony voluntarily or by subpoena,” in violation of the terms of § 3144. In his complaint, al-Kidd links his personal detention to these broader policies not only through inference, but also through the statements of Robert Mueller, the Director of the FBI. On March 27, while al-Kidd was jailed in Idaho, Mueller testified before Congress, listing five “major successes” in the FBI’s efforts toward “identifying and dismantling terrorist networks.” The first was the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, identified as “a key planner and the mastermind of the September 11th attack.” The second was al-Kidd, idenCharges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks (2003), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0306/full.pdf. The OIG Report’s focus is the post-9/11 detention on immigration charges of Arab and Muslim aliens, and touches only incidentally on those held as material witnesses. Because the report, an official government document, is cited extensively throughout the complaint, we deem it incorporated by reference, and take judicial notice of its entire contents. See In re Silicon Graphics Inc. Sec. Litig., 183 F.3d 970, 986 (9th Cir. 1999) (permitting incorporation by reference of documents “whose contents are alleged in a complaint and whose authenticity no party questions, but which are not physically attached to the [plaintiff’s] pleading”). AL-KIDD v. ASHCROFT 12277 tified as having been “arrested . . . en route to Saudi Arabia.” The other three “successes” all involved individuals “indicted” or “charged” with some crime connected to terrorism. See FBI’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2004 Budget: Hearing Before the Subcommitee on the Departments of Commerce, Justice and State, House Appropriations Commitee, 108th Cong. (2003) (statement of Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI), available at http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress03/mueller032703 .htm (hereafter Mueller Testimony). Finally, the complaint notes that “material witnesses have been routinely held in high security detention facilities.” The OIG Report cites an Assistant U.S. Attorney who complained that the DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons “did not distinguish between detainees who, in his view, posed a security risk and those detained aliens who were uninvolved witnesses.” OIG Report at 20. It alleges “a general policy” of extensive mistreatment of material witnesses at the New York City Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). It cites a case, United States v. Awadallah, 202 F. Supp. 2d 55, 59-61 (S.D.N.Y. 2002) (Awadallah I), rev’d on other grounds, 349 F.3d 42 (2d Cir. 2003) (Awadallah II), which discusses the conditions of confinement of another putative material witness, Osama Awadallah, held in New York City. The complaint avers that Ashcroft “knew or reasonably should have known of the unlawful, excessive, and punitive manner in which the federal material witness statute was being used,” and that such manner “would also foreseeably subject” detainees “to unreasonable and unlawful use of force, to unconstitutional conditions of confinement, and to punishment without due process.”