9/11 Detainee Released Without Charges After Nearly Five Years
Posted in H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts) on August 17th, 2006 3:45 pm by HL
9/11 Detainee Released After Nearly Five Years
AOL
Excerpt:
TORONTO (Aug. 13) – The date was Sept. 12, 2001, but Benemar “Ben” Benatta was clueless about the death and destruction one day earlier.
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.
H.L.s Take: No Charges, no explanation, nothing. Just hey sorry about the last 5 years of your life, but we had to look like we were doing something.