NEW YORK (AP) – A group of Legal Aid lawyers has filed a lawsuit accusing a former federal warden and prison officers of secretly videotaping the lawyers’ conversations with Arab and Muslim immigrants detained after the Sept 11 attacks.

The attorneys claim that they noticed video cameras in the areas where they visited clients at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn in the fall of 2001, but that prison officials told them they were turned off.

The meetings between detainees and their lawyers were in fact recorded, according to a December report by the Justice Department’s inspector general that found more than 40 instances of taped visits.

“We’re all pretty distressed and disturbed by the fact that the government was listening in on attorney-client conferences,” Legal Aid attorney Bryan Lonegan said Friday. “The government can’t be listening in. It’s just so fundamental to our constitutional liberties.”

None of the dozens of detainees represented by the lawyers were charged with terrorism-related crimes, but all were deported, according to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court. The Inspector General’s report also found a pattern of physical abuse of the detainees.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the bureau’s internal affairs office is investigating, and its report could lead to disciplinary action.

Retired warden Dennis Hasty referred questions to his attorney, who declined to comment on the lawsuit.