A.C.L.U. SAYS ETHNIC BIAS STEERED GEORGIA DRUG STING

The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing federal
prosecutors of ethnic bias in a sting last summer in which South Asian
owners of convenience stores in Georgia were charged with selling
household ingredients that could be used to make methamphetamine, a
highly addictive drug.

In a legal filing, the A.C.L.U. said yesterday that prosecutors
ignored extensive evidence that white-owned stores were selling the
same items to methamphetamine makers and focused instead on South
Asians to take advantage of language barriers.

The sting sent informants to convenience stores in six counties in
rural northwest Georgia beginning in 2003 to buy ingredients that can
be used to make the drug -- ordinary household items like Sudafed,
matches, aluminum foil and charcoal.

Prosecutors said the clerks should have known that the ingredients
would be used to make methamphetamine because the informants who
bought them said they needed the items to "finish up a cook," slang
for making the drug.

But several South Asians said they believed that the informants were
talking about barbecue.

Forty-four of the 49 people charged were Indian, and 23 out of 24
stores in the sting were owned or operated by Indians.

Documents filed by the A.C.L.U. yesterday include a sworn statement
from an informant in the sting, saying that federal investigators sent
informants only to Indian-owned stores, "because the Indians' English
wasn't good." The informant said investigators ignored the informant's
questions about why so many South-Asian-owned stores were visited in
the sting.

Other filings said prosecutors had several tips that more than a dozen
white-owned stores were selling the same ingredients, but failed to
follow up on them. According to a sworn statement from a witness, law
enforcement officials tipped off a white store owner about the
investigation and recommended ways to avoid scrutiny.

David E. Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District
of Georgia, denied any bias. "We prosecute people based on the
evidence and the law," Mr. Nahmias said in a statement, "not their
race or ethnicity."

To date, he said, 23 defendants have pleaded guilty, and eight cases
have been dismissed. Some of those cases were dismissed because
prosecutors charged the wrong people because of confusion over names;
more than 30 of the defendants share the common Indian surname Patel.

Of 629 convenience stores in the six-county area in the sting, 80
percent are owned or operated by whites, according to the A.C.L.U.'s
court filing, but fewer than 1 percent of the stores in the sting are
white-owned or operated. The filing said the clerk at the only
white-operated store was known widely as a methamphetamine addict
whose husband was in prison for making the drug. None of the Indians
charged are accused of using or making methamphetamine.

Mr. Nahmias noted that several defendants had already filed motions
claiming selective prosecution and that the court had rejected them.

But the A.C.L.U. said that the United States District Court in Rome,
Ga., rejected the motions because the group had not provided any
evidence. Since then, lawyers have spent $60,000 to track down
evidence, hiring private investigators and searching 10,000 documents,
according to the A.C.L.U. filing.