LOS ANGELES — Handcuffed and marched through Washington's Dulles International Airport in his Muslim clothing, the man with the long, dark beard could only imagine what people were thinking.
That scene unfolded in March 2003, a year and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the four planes hijacked in 2001 took off from Dulles. "I could only assume that they thought I was a terrorist," Abdullah al-Kidd recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
Al-Kidd called his airport arrest "one of the most, if not the most, humiliating experiences of my life."
The humiliation had only just begun.
Over the next 16 days he would be strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes. On a long trip between jails, a federal marshal refused to unlock al-Kidd's chains so he could use the bathroom.
Eight years later, the Supreme Court is weighing whether al-Kidd's arrest and detention violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The court, which will hear arguments Wednesday in the case, also is being asked to decide whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held personally liable for his role in setting the policy that led to al-Kidd's arrest at a Dulles ticket counter as he prepared to board a flight to Saudi Arabia.
In the midst of al-Kidd's detention, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress about recent major successes against terrorism. No. 1 on Mueller's list was the capture of professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
No. 2 was the arrest of al-Kidd, a Kansas-born convert to Islam who was not charged with a crime — either then or later.
Al-Kidd, now 38, was one of about 70 men, almost all Muslims, who were arrested and held in the months and years after Sept. 11 under a federal law intended to compel reluctant witnesses to testify to grand juries and at criminal trials.
The material witness law has existed in some form since 1789. But after Sept. 11, al-Kidd argues in his lawsuit, federal authorities began using it to take someone suspected of ties to terrorism off the streets even when they had insufficient evidence to believe he had committed a crime.
Ashcroft and other high-ranking officials publicly described the importance of using the material witness law against suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens. Less than two months after Sept. 11, Ashcroft said that the "aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks."
Al-Kidd was among the roughly half of those detained who were never called to testify in any criminal proceeding. One measure of Ashcroft's policy is that the government apologized to or reached monetary settlements with at least 13 people, according to a report by civil liberties groups.
But al-Kidd received no apology. The Obama administration, representing Ashcroft for his actions as attorney general, continues to argue the arrest was constitutional.
No attorney general has ever been held personally liable for official actions, civil rights lawyers said.
Five former attorneys general have joined the administration in urging the high court not to end that tradition. But 31 former federal prosecutors have sided with al-Kidd and argue the law's only proper use is to make sure witnesses show up.
The Supreme Court has said high-ranking officials may be held personally liable if they can be tied directly to a violation of constitutional rights and understood the action crossed that line.
At the trial court in Idaho and the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judges, who like Ashcroft were appointed by Republican presidents, have so far allowed the case against Ashcroft to go forward.
Al-Kidd said he has two main goals: personal vindication and "to insure this doesn't happen to other people." Now teaching English at a university in Saudi Arabia, al-Kidd sat for an interview shortly after returning to the United States this month to see his two children and other relatives.