A new report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union has accused the Justice Department of improperly detaining at least 70 Muslim men as material witnesses following the Sept. 11 attacks and of denying the detainees’ due process rights. The groups said the Bush administration threw the men into a “Kafkaesque world of indefinite detention without charge and baseless accusations of terrorist links.” Almost half of the men detained as material witnesses were never brought before a grand jury or court to testify. The U.S. government has apologized to 13 for wrongfully detaining them. Only a handful were ever charged with crimes related to terrorism. The Justice Department has refused to reveal how many material witnesses it has detained. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU have confirmed 70 such material witnesses. Sixty-four were of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent; 17 were U.S. citizens, and all but one was Muslim. The Justice Department has defended its policies. A spokesman said Sunday “Critics of law enforcement fail to recognize that material witness statutes are designed with judicial oversight safeguards and are critical to aiding criminal investigations ranging from organized crime rackets to human trafficking.”