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WELCOME TO AMERICA

Ebrahim, 37, who had a website design business in Brooklyn, and his plaintiff brother Hany, a deli worker, had lived in New York for several years before the September 11 attacks. They now live in Egypt.

The two were arrested on Sept 30, 2001, and held for eight months even after an FBI memo from December 7 stated they were cleared of links to terrorist groups, the lawsuit said.

A 2003 report by Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General found that some prison officers slammed detainees against walls, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods.

The report said videotapes showed some detention center staff "misused strip searches and restraints to punish detainees and that officers improperly and illegally recorded detainees' meetings with their attorneys."

The lawsuit said some of the plaintiffs, upon entering the jail, had their faces smashed into a wall where a blood-smeared American flag T-shirt was taped and told "welcome to America," according to the lawsuit.

The other plaintiffs who settled are Ashraf Ibrahim who also now lives in Egypt, Pakistan native Asif-Ur-Rehman Saffi who now lives in France and former Pakistani physician Shakir Baloch who now lives in Canada.

The lawsuit, which sued top Bush administration officials including former U.S. Attorney General John A... >>>