BOISE, Idaho (AP) – A U.S. citizen who said he was wrongly arrested when the government rounded up Muslim men after the 9/11 terrorist attacks has settled his lawsuit against the FBI.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Abdullah al-Kidd in the lawsuit, announced the settlement Friday. Under the terms of the settlement, the federal government offered its regrets to the former University of Idaho student and agreed to pay him $385,000 to compensate him for damages incurred when he spent 16 days in detention facilities in 2003.
“I am pleased the government has finally acknowledged the trouble it put me through and has compensated me for that trouble,” al-Kidd said in a prepared statement. “I hope no one else has to go through what I went through.”
According to the ACLU, the letter expressing regret that the federal government sent al-Kidd as part of the settlement said: “The government acknowledges that your arrest and detention as a witness was a difficult experience for you and regrets any hardship or disruption to your life that may have resulted from your arrest and detention.”
In his lawsuit, al-Kidd contended that he was one of about 70 Muslim men rounded up under the material witness statute in the months after the 9/11 attacks. The law is intended to make sure that reluctant witnesses show up for trial, but al-Kidd said he fully cooperated with authorities and was never told he might need to testify in the federal government’s case against a fellow University of Idaho student.