We've fallen and we can't get up

reading this kind of thing absolutely drives me up the wall...

About a week before, Canadian officials had stopped Benatta as he entered the country from Buffalo to seek political asylum. On that Sept. 11, he was quietly transferred to a U.S. immigration lockup where a day passed before sullen FBI agents told him what the rest of the world already knew: terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

It slowly dawned on Benatta that his pedigree - a Muslim man with a military background - made him a target in the frenzied national dragnet that soon followed. The FBI didn't accuse him of being a terrorist, at least not outright. But agents kept asking if he could fly an airplane.

He told them he couldn't. It made no difference.

"They gave me a feeling that I was Suspect No. 1," he said in a recent interview.

The veiled accusations and vehement denials would continue for nearly five years - despite official findings in 2001 that he had no terrorist links and in 2003 that authorities had violated his rights by colluding to keep him in custody.

Of the estimated 1,200 mostly Arab and Muslim men detained nationwide as potential suspects or witnesses in the Sept. 11 investigation, Benatta would earn a dubious distinction: Human rights groups say the former Algerian air force lieutenant was locked up the longest.

put yourself in this guy's shoes... the week before 9/11, you are detained... five years later, without being charged with anything, you are finally released... calling this kafkaesque is a serious understatement... how can you possibly justify this as the action of a nation-state devoted to human rights and justice...? answer...? you can't... not possible...

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