BROOKLYN: CHALLENGE TO POLICE SEARCH IS DISMISSED

A federal judge in Brooklyn has dismissed a claim by a drug courier who
swallowed heroin that surgery to retrieve the drug amounted to an
unconstitutional search and seizure. But he allowed part of the suit to
advance. The courier, William Kanyi of Ghana, was arrested at Kennedy
International Airport in 1998. In a civil suit filed in 1999, he said that
federal agents had forced him to have an operation to remove bags of heroin
he had swallowed. The judge, I. Leo Glasser, said Tuesday that the claim
was barred because the government is immune from suits seeking damages
based on alleged violations of the Constitution. The judge permitted some
of Mr. Kanyi's claims against Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens, and a
doctor, to proceed.