But the detentions come amid a deepening crackdown against media outlets that do not toe the government line.
Chris Stephen and Nancy Porsia have reported on the detentions and beatings faced by the estimated 3 million migrants in Libya where, they write, "the collapse of government authority has turned [it] into a gigantic funnel to Europe".
In an era in which Barack Obama covets the co-operation of the globalised world and seeks to repair the US image, the detention of Khan highlights underlying frictions regarding racially motivated profiling and detentions.
Among the records sought are a tally of how many people have been taken to Homan Square, as well as any video evidence of interrogations and detentions there – evidence that Angel Perez's case has independently turned up.
But he vividly recalls being taken to Homan Square, a warehouse used by the Chicago police for incommunicado detentions, where police inserted something into his rectum.
The organized crime unit, according to its website, is tasked with confronting illegal narcotics, gang activity and vice in Chicago, operations that numerous people formerly held at Homan Square believe led to their incommunicado detentions there.
It says the level of attacks on and detentions of journalists in the months after Morsi's overthrow was unprecedented in Egypt's history.
Now, among other police functions, it's a site for interrogations and hours-long detentions without public notice or legal access, compared by locals to a CIA black site.
Cumulatively, and amid the continuing mass arrests and detentions, these incidents have had a chilling effect on the media.
These detentions became a source of grievance for Shekau, and were repeatedly mentioned in a series of video messages in 2012.
Likewise with the miners' strike, the idea that the police could stage a mass violation of civil liberties, subjecting tens of thousands of people to arbitrary detentions and the military occupation of their villages – most of it barely reported by the mainstream media – will seem weird to young audiences now.
