Reuters -- October 11, 2001 

Los Alamos -- Hispanic ranchers and their heirs sued the US Government on Tuesday, charging it stole their land in 1942 to develop the atomic bomb, took them for forced labour and subjected them to radiation experiments. 

The lawsuit filed in Santa Fe federal court is the second this year to allege the army forced Hispanic homesteaders off a sprawling plateau in the northern New Mexico mountains to make room for what later became the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

While the earlier suit involving many of the same plaintiffs sought compensation for the lost land, Tuesday's action seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the abuse alleged by some 350 aging ranchers and their heirs. 

The complaint names as defendants Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, whose department owns Los Alamos, as well as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the army and its Corps of Engineers. 

"If we turn our eyes away from this type of atrocity, then we're saying that the US Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper," said Joe Gutierrez, leader of Pajarito Plateau Homesteaders Inc, a non-profit corporation created to represent the individuals in the land expropriation case. 

A spokesman for Los Alamos did not return calls for comment. But the weapons research lab has declined to comment in the past on the earlier lawsuit. 

Los Alamos inherited the site used by the top secret Manhattan Project, the US programme which developed the world's first atomic bomb during World War Two. 

According to the class-action civil rights lawsuit, about 30 families were living on the Pajarito Plateau when US Army troops and armed members of the Corps of Engineers appeared at their homes in late 1942, ordering them at gunpoint to collect their belongings and leave within 24 hours.