IN a year when the U.S. Government singled out hundreds of Muslim men for deportation on immigration charges in its search for culprits after the Sept. 11 attacks, deportees and their families say they were also victims of the hijacked plane strikes.

　　Their lives were unfairly turned upside down when the U.S. Government interrogated men of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent from the time it became known that 19 Muslim radicals were responsible, they say.

　　Former Memphis, Tennessee, taxi driver Khaled Darwich said in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo, Brazil, that he felt “pure sadness” towards the U.S. Government “for the way they looked at me.”

　　He was jailed for 10 months from Sept. 19 to July 16 in Tennessee and Louisiana without terrorism-related charges being filed against him.

　　Yasser Ebrahim, a 30-year-old Egyptian Web site designer who was held for more than eight months in a New York detention center, said he thinks he and others were scapegoats for the government failing to prevent the attacks.

　　“As soon as I was arrested, I felt like I had been taken to a different country. This is not the United States,” he said.

　　None of the estimated 1,200 people detained, including 752 charged with immigration violations, has been charged with crimes related to the attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania or plotting other acts of terrorism.

　　The U.S. Justice Department is being sued by constitutional rights groups and some deportees charging that the civil liberties of Muslim men have been violated.

　　Some alleged that jail guards and investigators physically beat them and verbally abused them about their religion during stints behind bars. The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said it is looking into such complaints, but did not expect to release any findings until October.

　　Deportees, immigration lawyers and human rights groups said they were concerned who the government might be letting go by sticking to its policy of profiling Muslim men.

　　Immigration attorney Sohail Mohammed of Clifton, New Jersey, who has had clients locked up in some of the state’s detention centers, said most would concede overstaying visas or working without authorization, both deportable offences.

　　“I think you will find that everyone would say, ‘Look I broke the law, so just be fair and fair in apprehending people,’” Mohammed said. “It starts out as a pure profiling issue but once people are in the system it becomes just plain bureaucracy.” 

　　(SD-Agencies)