Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Justice investigators find no rights abuses BY CURT ANDERSON THE ASSOCIATED I'KESS WASHINGTON - A Justice Department investigation into pos sible civil rights and civil liberties abuses under the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act found no abuses but a few instances of mistreat ment of Muslim and Arab people, mainly at U.S. prisons, according to a report released Tuesday. Among the 1,266 recent civil rights and civil liberties com plaints received between June 14 and Dec. 15,2003, only 17 involved Justice employees and merited a full investigation, according to the report by Glenn A. Fine, the de partment’s inspector general. Of those, most involved exces sive force, verbal abuse and other alleged mistreatment at Bureau of Prisons facilities. Congress required the inspec tor general to investigate possible civil rights and civil liberties abuses directed against Muslims, Arabs and others as part of the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that ex panded the government’s anti-ter rorism investigatory powers. The report found no civil rights or civil liberties abuses specifi cally related to the Patriot Act, which allows more phone taps, ex panded search powers and other surveillance techniques. The report did find that an unidentified immigration agent improperly displayed his creden ■ tials to an Arab-American gas sta tion attendant who said he was out of paper towels that the agent wanted. The agent also improper ly checked government databases for information about the atten dant. A Bureau of Prisons guard ac knowledged that he had previous ly misled investigators and now acknowledged verbally abusing a Muslim inmate and throwing his Koran into a garbage can. Investigators could not sub stantiate another inmate’s claim that an immigration enforcement officer held a loaded gun to the inmate’s head and threatened him while he was Ijeing trans ported. Several other complaints re main under investigation, includ ing one from a federal prisoner who claimed that a prison warden and some guards threatened to “gas” certain inmates following the Sept. 11 attacks. An Egyptian man detained after the attacks said he was improperly forced to undergo a body cavity search in the presence of numerous people, including a woman. The inspector general checked 162 complaints involving Justice employees. Another 384 were against other federal agencies or state and local government enti ties and were referred to those agencies for investigation. Most of the complaints were found to be “unrelated” to civil lib erties or civil rights. Rover sends new photos of martian landscape BY ANDREW BRIDGES THE ASSOCIATED CRESS PASADENA, CALIF. - NASA sci entists on Tuesday unveiled a high-resolution photograph of an intriguing slab of martian bedrock just yards from the Opportunity rover, while they worked to avojd the computer problems that crip pled its twin, Spirit. The sharp image shows what scientists called the first bedrock ever seen on the surface of Mars. The stone forms a portion of the rim of the shallow crater into which Opportunity bounced to a stop after landing during the weekend. “Opportunity has now sent us the most striking image yet,” said Steve Squyres, of Cornell University and the mission’s main scientist. The rock intrigues scientists, because it could contain evidence that Opportunity’s landing site once was a strikingly different place, perhaps wet enough to sup port life. NASA expects it will be one of Opportunity’s first targets, once it rolls off its lander some time in the next two weeks. To keep Opportunity on track, engineers have begun actively managing the files stored in its flash meipory, said Jim Erickson, a mission manager. Spirit, which landed on the op posite side of Mars, was crippled, because its random-access memo reproved inadequate to manage its flash memory which had be come packed with unnecessary files that piled up since the space craft’s launch. Together, the two 384-pound rovers make up a single $820 mil lion mission to prospect for geo logic evidence that Mars was once a wetter world capable of support ing life. NASA launched Spirit on June 10 and Opportunity on July. 7. While Opportunity was in ex cellent health following its Saturday landing, the prognosis for its sibling, 6,600 miles and halfway around the planet, re mained iffy. “We do not yet know if Spirit will be perfect again,” mission manager Jennifer Trosper said. Spirit began acting up last week, when it stopped sending data and began rebooting its com puter, eventually resetting it roughly 130 times. At one point, the rover thought it was the year 2053, Trosper said. To tame Spirit’s computer, en gineers temporarily disabled its flash memory. Engineers believe they gave Spirit too little random access memory, or RAM, to ade quately manage its file-packed flash memory, which is similar to the memory used by digital cam eras to store photographs. Cutting off the flash memory eased the burden on Spirit’s RAM and ended the rebooting loop, Trosper said. Engineers planned to begin deleting this week hundreds of un needed files, stored in the months since launch, to make the memo ry more manageable for the rover’s RAM, Trosper added. “It’s kind of like we have a pa tient in rehab, and we are nursing hep back to health,” Trosper said. Spirit could resume normal sci ,ence operations in two to three weeks, NASA said. Opportunity could move off its lander in 10 to 14 days, after fully unfolding from the cramped posi tion it held during its seven-month trip from Earth. NASA sent Spirit to Gusev Crater, which once might have contained a lake. Opportunity landed in Meridiani Planum, which scientists believe abounds in a mineral called gray hematite. The iron-rich mineral typically forms in marine or volcanic envi ronments marked by hydrother mal activity. "—imuBrar™ rmmi™nr~mir~~iigmnriTTrrmn— PHOTO COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS A Boeing Delta II rocket, carrying the first of two Mars rovers, is launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station In Florida on Tuesday, June 10, 2003. A Great Apartment Shouldn't Cost • The Shirt Off Your Back ^ STERIJN€*TOIVERSITY Prices Starting at $345 * f|S . ?liM, 215 Spencer Place • 739-0899 “ SUH is a Trademark of SUH Inc. WWW.Sterll HQ HOUSI ng.COITI