A federal judge has thrown out the claims of several Muslim men who say the government was wrong to hold them on immigration violations and treat them as terror suspects following the September 11 attacks.

In a 99-page ruling released yesterday, Judge John Gleeson of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn rejects the allegation of seven Muslim men and one Hindu man that, although they were here illegally, their constitutional rights were violated when they were rounded up and held for months following the attacks.

“After the September 11 attacks, our government used all available law enforcement tools to ferret out the persons responsible for those atrocities and to prevent additional acts of terrorism,” Judge Gleeson wrote. “We should expect nothing less. One of those tools was the authority to arrest and detain illegal aliens.”

On the first page of the decision, Judge Gleeson compared the detention of these men to that of a dangerous suspect who has been pulled over for a minor violation, such as changing lanes without signaling. “Similarly,” he continues, “the government may use its authority to detain illegal aliens pending deportation even if its real interest is building criminal cases against them.

Judge Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who was appointed to the bench by President Clinton, also ruled that the parts of the lawsuit in which the men allege they were beaten and harassed during their imprisonment could go forward.

Lawyers for the civil rights group that represents the men, the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the decision is the first since the September 11 terror attacks to examine the constitutionality of using immigration violations as a cause to detain persons for lengthy periods of time while they are investigated for links to terrorism.

Legal experts were divided in their response to the ruling. Some saw in Judge Gleeson’s reasoning the simple application of immigration procedures.

“They’re making something out of the fact that they were rounded up after 9/11 – but that’s not a legal category,” said a law professor at Harvard University, Charles Fried.

Judge Gleeson notes that four of the plaintiffs were deported within the legal limit of six months from receiving a deportation order from an immigration court.

Critics of the decision charged that the ruling would encourage law enforcement’s use of racial profiling in the wake of a future terror attack.

“If there is another attack and it is followed – as it will be – by another roundup, this decision says ‘go ahead – round up Arabs and Muslims based on nothing more than religious, ethnic identity and lock them up as immigrants for as long as you want,'” said a Georgetown University law professor connected to the Center for Constitutional Rights, David Cole.

Mr. Fried said that any discussion of racial-profiling in this case was “just sloganeering.” He said: “You have no right not to be apprehended, detained, deported, if you’re here illegally. Period.”

The lawsuit was filed in 2002, after the eight men had all been deported to Canada, France, Turkey and Egypt. The men were detained for periods of up to seven months, and allege that prison guards brutalized them in a variety of ways, including by smashing them against walls, denying them sleep, subjecting them to gratuitous strip searches, and frequently preventing them from accessing an attorney or practicing Islam.

Judge Gleeson’s opinion opens the way for depositions from Attorney General Ashcroft and other former administration officials to learn what decisions they made, if any, regarding the conditions of detainment. Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that the detention was intended to be punishment.

Judge Gleeson ruled: “It is too early to tell whether the plaintiffs will be able to prove such allegations, but it is also too early to fairly conclude that they should not be permitted the opportunity to do so.

Earlier this year, four of the plaintiffs returned, under federal guard, to the United States to be deposed in connection to their case. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have alleged that the government has been eavesdropping on their conversations without a warrant. The magistrate-judge handling the case under Judge Gleeson has ordered the government to disclose what members of the trial team know about any government wiretapping in the case.