Former Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft had a busy day in court yesterday. A federal appeals court ruled he could not be held responsible for kidnapping a Canadian citizen in New York and shipping him off to Syria where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured. But, in another case, five men, who had been living in New York and were ultimately deported, won a $1.26 million settlement from the US government in a suit accusing Ashcroft and other officials of racial profiling, illegal detention and abuse of Muslim, Arab and South Asian men in the days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.