Ahmer Abbasi speaks softly as he describes the strip searches, the extra shoves, the curses that he endured in a federal jail in Brooklyn following the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I don't think I deserved it," Abbasi said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Karachi, Pakistan.

Abbasi's quiet, matter-of-fact tone belies his determination, even after 15 years, to seek justice in American courts — provided the Supreme Court will let him.

The justices on Wednesday are hearing an appeal from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and other former U.S. officials that seeks to shut down the lawsuit that human rights lawyers have filed on behalf of Abbasi and others over their harsh treatment and prolonged detention.

"Somebody has to be accountable, somebody has to be responsible," said Abbasi, 42, who works in real estate in Pakistan.

The former officials, including the top immigration enforcement officer and the warden and deputy warden at the New York City jail, say it should not be them.

"Senior government officials should not be regularly second-guessed by lawsuits seeking money damages from them in their personal capacity," said Richard Samp, chief counsel at the Washington Legal Foundation and author of a brief from four former attorneys general.

Abbasi was among more than 80 men who were picked up in the days and weeks following Sept. 11 on immigration violations. Until then, he said he had been "living the American dream" since coming from Pakistan in 1993. He was living in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan and driving a taxi in New York.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that had directed North Carolina legislators to redraw state legislative districts by March 15 and hold special elections within the altered districts this fall.

The court order granted the request of North Carolina Republican legislative leaders and state officials to delay November's ruling by a three-judge panel. The panel last summer threw out 28 state House and Senate districts as illegal racial gerrymanders.

The Supreme Court says its order will stay in place at least until the court decides whether to hear an appeal the state previously requested. If the justices take up the case, the stay will remain in effect pending a decision.

If no special elections are required, the next round of General Assembly elections would be held in late 2018. The GOP currently holds majorities large enough to override any vetoes by newly installed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Special elections could give Democrats a chance to narrow those margins and give leverage to Cooper.

The delay comes in an atmosphere of intense political division in the state: On Tuesday, the governor expanded the scope of a lawsuit he previously had filed seeking to overturn laws GOP legislators passed to limit his powers just two weeks before he was sworn in.

The voters who sued over the maps alleged that Republican lawmakers drew the boundaries to create more predominantly white and Republican districts by effectively cramming black voters into adjacent Democratic districts. GOP lawmakers said the majority-black districts were drawn to protect them against lawsuits alleging they violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act.

A man who escaped from a Rhode Island prison and was on the run for five days before being captured in Massachusetts is scheduled to make an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge.

James Morales escaped from the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls last Saturday and was captured Thursday in Somerville. Authorities believe he may have tried to rob two banks before he was caught.

Morales is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Providence on an escape charge.

Authorities say Morales escaped New Year's Eve by climbing a basketball hoop, cutting through a fence and climbing th brough razor wire. It took hours for correctional officers to notice.

The 35-year-old former Army reservist was being held on charges he stole 16 guns from a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Worcester.

The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a company that wants to offer flight-sharing services using a model similar to Uber.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that said Boston-based Flytenow could not operate a website that connected private pilots with passengers willing to share fuel costs and other flight expenses.

The Federal Aviation Administration shut down the website in 2015 after finding that the service violated flight regulations.

Cost-sharing arrangements have long been allowed through word of mouth, bulletin boards and email. But the FAA said using a website was like advertising and subjected those pilots to the same elaborate safety regulations as commercial airlines.

Flytenow argued that it was applying modern technology to a practice that has been around for decades.

A South Korean court sentenced the former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser to seven years in prison Friday after the company's disinfectant for humidifiers killed scores of people and left hundreds with permanent lung damage.

The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Shin Hyun-woo, Oxy chief from 1991-2005, was guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising the deadly product as being safe even for children. Seven years is the maximum prison term the court could issue.

Choi Chang-young, chief judge of the case, said the disaster could have been prevented if Shin and others in the company, a subsidiary of British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, had tried to ensure the chemicals' safety.

Attorneys for a Kansas death row inmate convicted of killing his estranged wife, their two daughters and his wife's grandmother in 2009 will get to make their case to the state's highest court about why he should be spared.

James Kraig Kahler argues in his appeal that the court where he stood trial made mistakes, and he questions whether his death sentence was warranted.

Friday's hearing will be the Kansas Supreme Court's first death penalty case since Election Day, when voters retained four of its justices who were targeted for ouster partly because the court overturned other death sentences.

Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994 but hasn't executed anyone in more than half a century. The state Supreme Court has overturned death sentences seven times in 20 years, with five of those decisions later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kahler was convicted in 2011 of fatally shooting Karen Kahler, 44, her 89-year-old grandmother, Dorothy Wight, and the Kahlers' two daughters, 18-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Lauren, at Wight's home in Burlingame, about 65 miles southwest of Kansas City. Authorities said he went from room to room shooting his victims. The couple's 10-year-old son survived unharmed.