The Bush administration is experimenting with ways to detain American citizens — on American soil — without probable cause when it believes that those people might be dangerous.

The approach they’ve hit on, which seems to be working for them so far, is to abuse the material witness law.

The federal material witness law allows for the government to detain witnesses to a crime if it believes the witness is a flight risk. But civil rights groups, and people who have had their lives ruined by being locked up under material witness laws, say the government is abusing the material witness laws to detain people it considers suspicious but doesn’t have enough evidence to charge with a crime.

Such material witness laws have been around for centuries, and these days prosecutors use them to ensure that reluctant witnesses actually show up in court. But there have also been abuses. And there are strange cases, such as the Pennsylvania prosecutor who locked up two teenagers who witnessed a murder.

But the U.S. has been locking up people with no known connections to terrorism, such as Abdullah al Kidd. He is suing the government over his ordeal.

Mr. al Kidd, who was known as Lavoni T. Kidd before he converted to Islam, spent 16 days in detention in three states in 2003, some of it shackled hand and foot. That was followed by 14 months under court supervision. Mr. al Kidd was not charged with a crime, and he was not called to testify, though a government affidavit said he had information “crucial to the prosecution” of another man. Mr. al Kidd said in a recent interview that his arrest and detention shattered his marriage and destroyed his career. He now drives a cab in Las Vegas.

“I call it social assassination, really,” Mr. al Kidd said. “It’s just basically taken me out of a lot of opportunities and placed me into a small box. I’m not doing anything my heart actually desires.”

Mr. al Kidd, who had apparently attracted the government’s attention after pursuing religious studies in Yemen, was interviewed repeatedly by the F.B.I. in 2002. He never missed an appointment, his lawsuit says. Yet, after a six-month lull and with no warning, he was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia on March 16, 2003, as he tried to board a flight to Saudi Arabia to pursue a doctorate in Islamic studies.

Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams of the Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho, authorized the arrest, based on an affidavit from Special Agent Scott Mace of the F.B.I. “Kidd is scheduled to take a one-way, first-class flight (costing about $5,000),” the affidavit said.

That statement was false in every particular: the ticket was for a round trip, in coach, costing $1,700.

“If I had submitted an affidavit under penalty of perjury that contained false information,” said Scott McKay, who represented the man Mr. al Kidd was said to have evidence about, “I would have been prosecuted.” Mr. Mace, his lawyer and F.B.I. officials referred questions to a Justice Department spokesman, who declined to comment beyond referring a reporter to the court papers in the case.

In those papers, the government said the false statements in the affidavit were immaterial. “Either way,” government lawyers wrote in a brief asking that Mr. al Kidd’s case be dismissed, “there is no dispute that plaintiff purchased an expensive airline ticket to a foreign country with which the United States did not have an extradition treaty.” — New York Times

So the government wants to get away with lying about the arrest warrant to lock up Kidd for no reason, when it had no evidence he was involved in anything at all.

It gets better. Congress is considering a revision to the material witness law which would limit material witness detentions to 10 days for grand jury investigations and 30 days for trials, and only in cases where there the witness is a flight risk. This probably wouldn’t have helped Kidd, as the FBI agent clearly lied to get the warrant.

Human Rights Watch has reported previously on U.S. abuse of the material witness law.

And remember, if you’re in jail as a material witness, it’s for your protection.