A smoke plume rises from lower Manhattan September 11, 2001 in this photo taken from space on the International Space Station (ISS) and released by NASA on September 11, 2011. REUTERS/ISS Expedition 3 Commander Frank L. Culbertson/NASA

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A divided U.S. appeals court said the federal government’s top law enforcers can be sued by former inmates who claim their civil rights were violated while jailed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks because they were Arab, Muslim or stereotyped that way.

Wednesday’s 2-1 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prompted an impassioned dissent that the ruling could make it harder to protect the country against terrorism.

The court revived claims against Bush administration officials including Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller and Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James Ziglar by former inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

These inmates claimed they were illegally singled out as Muslims, Arabs or South Asians for 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, strip searches, sleep deprivation and other abuses