Canadian Held After 9/11 Part Of Suit

Canadian held after 9/11 part of suit

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Nat...25490-sun.html

Sat, April 8, 2006
By GILLIAN LIVINGSTON, CP

TORONTO -- A Canadian detained in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is hoping a class-action lawsuit against senior U.S. government officials earns him the apology he says he deserves -- and saves others from enduring the same thing he did.

Akhil Sachdeva, 34, who lives in Brampton, was "terrified" when police, guns drawn, arrested him in December 2001 during a visit to New York and threw him into a filthy, unruly group cell without ever telling him what he'd done wrong.

"I wish that someone from the U.S. government apologizes," Sachdeva said yesterday.

Sachdeva, a Hindu from India who is now a Canadian citizen, is one of eight involved in a class-action suit filed against a group of U.S. officials, including former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller.

Earlier this week, Sachdeva testified about his treatment in a closed-door deposition in Toronto in front of U.S. lawyers in the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that hundreds of men, mainly Muslims and men from the Middle East or South Asia, were picked up on minor immigration or other violations and illegally imprisoned in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The lead attorney for the defendants, Stephen Handler, didn't return calls yesterday.

It's likely to be two years before the class action, filed in April 2002 by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, gets to trial, said Rachel Meeropol, the suit's lead attorney,

Three of the defendants have filed a motion for dismissal, and a ruling is pending. Part of the case will go ahead regardless of that decision, Meeropol said.

"Nobody ever told me why I was arrested," said Sachdeva.