WASHINGTON, 1 March 2006 — The US government has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who was among dozens of Muslims detained after the Sept. 11 attacks, held for months and deported, The New York Times reported yesterday.

The settlement is the first the government has made in a number of suits saying that non-citizens were abused and their constitutional rights violated after the attacks.

Lawyers representing both Ehab Elmaghraby, an Egyptian who lived in the United States for 13 years and ran a restaurant in Manhattan, and Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani, who is still pursuing the suit, described the outcome as significant.

Elmaghraby spent nearly a year in detention, and Iqbal was held for nine months. Both men charged that while shackled they were kicked and punched until they bled, the newspaper said.

At one point, Iqbal said he was kicked in the stomach by his captors, punched in the face and dragged across a room. Elmaghraby alleged that correction officers had inserted a flashlight into his rectum during one cavity search, leaving him bleeding.

The two men eventually pleaded guilty to minor charges unrelated to terrorism and were deported to their countries after serving prison time.

“This is a substantial settlement and shows for the first time that the government can be held accountable for the abuses that have occurred in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and in prisons right here in the United States,” said one of the lawyers, Alexander Reinert of Koob & Magoolaghan.

A 2003 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general found widespread abuse on the non-citizen detainees at the Brooklyn Center after 9/11, and in recent months, 10 of the center’s guards and supervisors were disciplined.

The inspector general’s report said that little effort was made to distinguish between legitimate terrorism suspects and people picked up by chance, and that clearances took months, not days, because they were deemed “a low priority.”

Among the abuses described in the report — many of them recorded on prison security videotape — were beatings, sexual humiliations and illegal recording of lawyer-client conversations.

In all, 762 non-citizens were arrested in the weeks after 9/11, mostly on immigration violations, according to government records. Elmaghraby and Iqbal were among the 184 identified as being “of high interest” and held in a maximum-security prison until the FBI cleared them of terrorist links.

The settlement was filed in federal court late on Monday, the newspaper said. It removes one of two plaintiffs from a case in which a federal judge ruled in the autumn that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other top government officials must answer questions under oath.

Government officials have appealed that ruling.

Elmaghraby, 38, was reported to have reluctantly decided to settle to cover medical bills arising from the abuse he suffered when detained.

“This settlement is a victory not just for me, but for all detainees who suffered at the hands of the federal government in the aftermath of Sept. 11,” Elmaghraby said in a statement.

Iqbal, who is pursuing the case, was one of a number of former detainees allowed to return to New York under tight security restrictions earlier this year to provide depositions in their lawsuits.