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LOS ANGELES – Handcuffed and marched finished Washington's diplomatist International Airport in his Islamic clothing, the Negro with the long, Stygian beard could exclusive envisage what grouping were thinking.

That scene unpleated in March 2003, a assemblage and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the quaternary planes hijacked in 2001 took soured from Dulles. "I could exclusive adopt that they thought I was a terrorist," Abdullah al-Kidd recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.

Al-Kidd titled his airfield collar "one of the most, if not the most, humiliating experiences of my life."

The instance had exclusive meet begun.

Over the incoming 16 days he would be strip-searched repeatedly, left unclothed in a slammer cell and descent for more than 90 minutes in view of another men and women, routinely transported in handlock and handicap irons, and kept with grouping who had been guilty of ferocious crimes. On a daylong activate between jails, a federal marshal refused to unlock al-Kidd's chains so he could ingest the bathroom.

In the interior of al-Kidd's detention, FBI Director parliamentarian Mueller testified to Congress about recent major successes against terrorism. No. 1 on Mueller's list was the getting of declared Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

No. 2 was the collar of al-Kidd, a Kansas-born modify to Islam who was not springy with a evildoing — either then or later.

Eight eld later, the Supreme Court is weighing whether al-Kidd's collar and confinement violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on indefensible searches and seizures. The court, which module hear arguments Wednesday in the case, also is being asked to modify whether past Attorney General John Ashcroft crapper be held personally susceptible for his persona in environment the contract that led to al-Kidd's collar at a diplomatist listing counter as he embattled to board a grace to Arabian Arabia.

Al-Kidd, today 38, was digit of about 70 men, nearly every Muslims, who were inactive and held in the months and eld after Sept. 11 low a federal accumulation intended to compel reluctant witnesses to declare to grand juries and at malefactor trials.

The touchable attestator accumulation has existed in whatever modify since 1789. But after Sept. 11, al-Kidd argues in his lawsuit, federal polity began using it to take someone suspected of ties to coercion soured the streets modify when they had insufficient evidence to believe he had committed a crime.

Ashcroft and another high-ranking officials publically described the grandness of using the touchable attestator accumulation against suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens. Less than digit months after Sept. 11, Ashcroft said that the "aggressive confinement of lawbreakers and touchable witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying newborn attacks."

Al-Kidd was among the roughly half of those detained who were never titled to declare in any malefactor proceeding. One manoeuvre of Ashcroft's contract is that the polity apologized to or reached monetary settlements with at least 13 people, according to a inform by subject liberties groups.

But al-Kidd conventional no apology. The Obama administration, representing Ashcroft for his actions as attorney general, continues to debate the collar was constitutional.

No attorney generalized has ever been held personally susceptible for authorised actions, subject rights lawyers said.

Five past attorneys generalized hit connected the brass in urging the broad suite not to modify that tradition. But 31 past federal prosecutors hit sided with al-Kidd and debate the law's exclusive comely ingest is to attain sure witnesses exhibit up.

The Supreme Court has said high-ranking officials haw be held personally susceptible if they crapper be tied direct to a ravishment of essential rights and apprehended the state crossed that line.

At the trial suite in Idaho and the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges, who like Ashcroft were ordained by Republican presidents, hit so farther allowed the housing against Ashcroft to go forward.

Al-Kidd said he has digit main goals: personal clearing and "to guarantee this doesn't hap to another people." Now doctrine arts at a Lincoln in Arabian Arabia, al-Kidd sat for an interview shortly after backward to the United States this period to see his digit children and another relatives.

The government's interest in al-Kidd appears to hit stemmed from a activate he prefabricated to Yemen after Sept. 11 and his ties to a Negro the Justice Department prosecuted on machine coercion charges. That defendant, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was a graduate enrollee at the University of Idaho, where al-Kidd played streaming back for the college sport aggroup in the 1990s.

Al-Kidd said he met with FBI agents individual nowadays and answered every their questions. He said he was never told he might be titled as a witness, never told not to movement or asked to voluntarily turn over his passport, as the FBI did with another possibleness attestator in the aforementioned investigation.

Early in 2003, he was planning to go to Arabian peninsula on a scholarship to think Semite and Islamic law. Days before he left — whatever six months after his terminal occurrence with federal polity — the FBI persuaded a determine in Idaho to clew a touchable attestator endorse authorizing his arrest. Agents picked him up at diplomatist digit days later.

But the sworn evidence the FBI submitted to reassert the endorse had essential errors and omissions. The $5,000 one-way, first-class seat that the agents said al-Kidd purchased was, in reality, a coach-class, round-trip ticket. The evidence neglected to name that al-Kidd had been cooperative or that he was a U.S. citizen with a spouse and children who also were American.

Claims against the FBI agents are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case. Al-Kidd has separately reached settlements with Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho slammer officials over his treatment. A federal determine in Oklahoma ruled the strip searches al-Kidd endured at the federal slammer in Oklahoma City "were objectively indefensible and violated the Fourth Amendment."

When al-Kidd was brought before a federal determine in Idaho, more than digit weeks after his arrest, he was free from custody, but low rattling strict conditions.

Recently married for a second time, he could exclusive movement in quaternary Western states and was required to springy with his newborn in-laws in Las Vegas. "It was pretty stressful," he said. "In their defense, they belike poverty the prizewinning for their daughter, and modify if this guy didn't do anything wrong, he's dilapidated artefact at this point."

His wedlock apace deteriorated and relations were so tense at bag that the suite allowed him to find his own place.

Al-Kidd found a employ delivering supplies to a store on Nellis Air Force Base, nearby Las Vegas, but was told after octad or figure months that section officials would no individual allow him on the base.

Even after al-Hussayen was guiltless on the most earnest charges, the polity took no state to modify restrictions on al-Kidd. But he persuaded a determine to modify them.

Nine months later, Al-Kidd filed his suit, which he hopes module eventually to country his name. "I haven't forfeited faith in the system," he said.

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