The New American Justice

[Rspaight]

For those unfamiliar with this case, a good summary and timeline can be found here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/

Maher Arar complete statement to media

CanWest News Service
Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Statement to the media by Maher Arar, Nov. 4, 2003.

I am here today to tell the people of Canada what has happened to me.

There have been many allegations made about me in the media, all of them by people who refuse to be named or come forward. So before I tell you who I am and what happened to me, I will tell you who I am not.

I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of al-Qaida and I do not know any one who belongs to this group. All I know about al-Qaida is what I have seen in the media.

I have never been to Afghanistan. I have never been anywhere near Afghanistan and I do not have any desire to ever go to Afghanistan.
Now, let me tell you who I am.

I am a Syrian-born Canadian. I moved here with my parents when I was 17 years old. I went to university and studied hard, and eventually obtained a Masters degree in telecommunications.

I met my wife, Monia at McGill University. We fell in love and eventually married in 1994. I knew then that she was special, but I had no idea how special she would turn out to be.

If it were not for her, I believe I would still be in prison.

We had our first child, a daughter named Bar‚a, in February 1997. She is six years old now. In December 1997, we moved to Ottawa from Montreal.

I took a job with a high-tech firm, called The MathWorks, in Boston in 1999, and my job involved a lot of travel within the U.S.

Then in 2001 I decided to come back to Ottawa to start my own consulting company. We had our second child, Houd, in February 2002. He is 20 months old now.

So this is who I am. I am a father and a husband. I am a telecommunications engineer and entrepreneur. I have never had trouble with the police and have always been a good citizen.

So I still cannot believe what has happened to me, and how my life and career have been destroyed.

In September 2002, I was with my wife and children, and her family, vacationing in Tunis.

I got an e-mail from the MathWorks saying that they might need me soon to assess a potential consulting work for one of their customers.

I said goodbye to my wife and family, and headed back home to prepare for work.

I was using my air-miles to travel, and the best flight I could get went from Tunis, to Zurich, to New York, to Montreal.

My flight arrived in New York at 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2002. I had a few hours to wait until my connecting flight to Montreal.

This is when my nightmare began. I was pulled aside at immigration and taken to another area.

Two hours later some officials came and told me this was regular procedure -- they took my fingerprints and photographs.

Then some police came and searched my bags and copied my Canadian passport. I was getting worried, and I asked what was going on, and they would not answer.

I asked to make a phone call, and they would not let me.

Then a team of people came and told me they wanted to ask me some questions. One man was from the FBI, and another was from the New York Police Department.

I was scared and did not know what was going on.

I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because I was not an American citizen.

They asked me where I worked and how much money I made. They swore at me, and insulted me. It was very humiliating.

They wanted me to answer every question quickly.

They were consulting a report while they were questioning me, and the information they had was so private -- I thought this must be from Canada. I told them everything I knew.

They asked me about my travel in the United States. I told them about my work permits, and my business there.

They asked about information on my computer and whether I was willing to share it. I welcomed the idea, but I don’t know if they did. They asked me about different people, some I know, and most I do not.

They asked me about Abdullah Almalki, and I told them I worked with his brother at high-tech firms in Ottawa, and that the Almalki family had come from Syria about the same time as mine. I told them I did not know Abdullah well, but had seen him a few times and I described the times I could remember.

I told them I had a casual relationship with him.

They were so rude with me, yelling at me that I had a selective memory. Then they pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this.

I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that he had signed it for me -- when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah’s brother, and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah.

But they thought I was hiding this. I told them the truth. I had nothing to hide. I had never had problems in the United States before, and I could not believe what was happening to me.

This interrogation continued until midnight. I was very, very worried, and asked for a lawyer again and again.

They just ignored me. Then they put me in chains, on my wrists and ankles, and took me in a van to a place where many people were being held -- another building by the airport. They would not tell me what was happening.

At one in the morning they put me in a room with metal benches in it. I could not sleep. I was very, very scared and disoriented. The next morning they started questioning me again.

They asked me about what I think about bin Laden, Palestine, Iraq. They also asked me about the mosques I pray in, my bank accounts, my e-mail addresses, my relatives, about everything.

This continued on and off for eight hours.

Then a man from the INS came in and told me they wanted me to volunteer to go to Syria. I said no way.

I said I wanted to go home to Canada or sent back to Switzerland. He said to me ‘you are a special interest.’ They asked me to sign a form. They would not let me read it, but I just signed it. I was exhausted and confused and disoriented.

I had not slept or eaten since I was in the plane. At about six in the evening they brought me some cold McDonalds meal to eat.

This was the first food I had eaten since the last meal I had on the plane. At about eight o’clock they put all the shackles and chains back on, and put me in a van, and drove me to a prison.

I later learned this was the Metropolitan Detention Centre. They would not tell me what was happening, or where I was going.

They strip searched me. It was humiliating. They put me in an orange suit, and took me to a doctor, where they made me sign forms, and gave me a vaccination.

I asked what it was, and they would not tell me. My arm was red for almost two weeks from that.

They took me to a cell. I had never seen a prison before in my life, and I was terrified. I asked again for a phone call and a lawyer. They just ignored me.

They treated me differently than the other prisoners. They would not give me a toothbrush or toothpaste, or reading material. I did get a copy of the Koran about two days later.

After five days, they let me make a phone call. I called Monia’s mother, who was here in Ottawa, and told her I was scared they might send me to Syria, and asked her to help find me a lawyer. They would only let me talk for two minutes.

On the seventh or eighth day they brought me a document, saying they had decided to deport me, and I had a choice of where to be deported. I wrote that I wanted to go to Canada. It asked if I had concerns about going to Canada. I wrote no, and signed it.

The Canadian consul came on Oct. 4, and I told her I was scared of being deported to Syria. She told me that would not happen. She told me that a lawyer was being arranged. I was very upset, and scared. I could barely talk.

The next day, a lawyer came. She told me not to sign any document unless she was present. We could only talk for 30 minutes. She said she would try to help me. That was a Saturday.

On Sunday night at about 9 p.m., the guards came to my cell and told me my lawyer was there to see me. I thought it was a strange time, and they took me into a room with seven or eight people in it.

I asked where my lawyer was. They told me he had refused to come and started questioning me again.

They said they wanted to know why I did not want to go back to Syria. I told them I would be tortured there. I told them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim; my mother’s cousin had been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years.

They asked me to sign a document and I refused. I told them they could not send me to Syria - I would be tortured.

I asked again for a lawyer. At three in the morning they took me back to my cell. At three in the morning on Tuesday, Oct. 8, a prison guard woke me up and told me I was leaving.

They took me to another room and stripped and searched me again. Then they again chained and shackled me.

Then two officials took me inside a room and read me what they said was a decision by the INS director. They told me that based on classified information that they could not reveal to me, I would be deported to Syria.

I said again that I would be tortured there. Then they read part of the document where it explained that INS was not the body that deals with Geneva Convention regarding torture.

Then they took me outside into a car and drove me to an airport in New Jersey. Then they put me on a small private jet. I was the only person on the plane with them. I was still chained and shackled. We flew first to Washington.

A new team of people got on the plane and the others left. I overheard them talking on the phone, saying that Syria was refusing to take me directly, but Jordan would take me.

Then we flew to Portland, to Rome, and then to Amman, Jordan. All the time I was on the plane I was thinking how to avoid being tortured. I was very scared.

We landed in Amman at three in the morning local time on Oct. 9. They took me out of plane and there were six or seven Jordanian men waiting for us.

They blindfolded and chained me, and put me in a van. They made me bend my head down in the back seat. Then, these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk they beat me.

For the first few minutes it was very intense.

Thirty minutes later, we arrived at a building where they took off my blindfold and asked routine questions, before taking me to a cell. It was around 4:30 in the morning on Oct. 9.

Later that day, they took my fingerprints, and blindfolded me and put me in a van. I asked where I was going, and they told me I was going back to Montreal.

About 45 minutes later, I was put into a different car. These men started beating me again. They made me keep my head down, and it was very uncomfortable, but every time I moved, they beat me again. Over an hour later, we arrived at what I think was the border with Syria.

I was put in another car and we drove for another three hours.

I was taken into a building, where some guards went through my bags and took some chocolates I bought in Zurich. I asked one of the people where I was and he told me I was in the Palestine branch of the Syrian military intelligence. It was now about six in the evening on Oct. 9.

Three men came and took me into a room. I was very, very scared. They put me on a chair, and one of the men started asking me questions. I later learned this man was a colonel.

He asked me about my brothers, and why we had left Syria. I answered all the questions. If I did not answer quickly enough, he would point to a metal chair in the corner and ask ‘Do you want me to use this?’ I did not know then what that chair was for. I learned later it was used to torture people.

I asked him what he wanted to hear. I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured. I would say anything to avoid torture. This lasted for four hours. There was no violence, only threats this day.

At about one in the morning, the guards came to take me to my cell downstairs.

We went into the basement, and they opened a door, and I looked in. I could not believe what I saw. I asked how long I would be kept in this place. He did not answer, but put me in and closed the door. It was like a grave. It had no light.

It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high. It had a metal door, with a small opening in the door, which did not let in light because there was a piece of metal on the outside for sliding things into the cell.

There was a small opening in the ceiling, about one foot by two feet with iron bars. Over that was another ceiling, so only a little light came through this.

There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time the cats peed through the opening into the cell. There were two blankets, two dishes and two bottles. One bottle was for water and the other one was used for urinating during the night. Nothing else. No light.

I spent 10 months, and 10 days inside that grave.

The next day I was taken upstairs again. The beating started that day and was very intense for a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and the third days were the worst.

I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and screaming and screaming. Interrogations are carried out in different rooms.

One tactic they use is to question prisoners for two hours, and then put them in a waiting room, so they can hear the others screaming, and then bring them back to continue the interrogation.

The cable is a black electrical cable, about two inches thick. They hit me with it everywhere on my body.

They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed and hit my wrists -- they were sore and red for three weeks. They also struck me on my hips, and lower back. Interrogators constantly threatened me with the metal chair, tire and electric shocks.

The tire is used to restrain prisoners while they torture them with beating on the sole of their feet. I guess I was lucky, because they put me in the tire, but only as a threat.

I was not beaten while in tire.

They used the cable on the second and third day, and after that mostly beat me with their hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck, and slapping me on the face.

Where they hit me with the cables, my skin turned blue for two or three weeks, but there was no bleeding. At the end of the day, they told me tomorrow would be worse. So I could not sleep.

Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about 18 hours. They beat me from time to time and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before resuming the interrogation.

While in the waiting room I heard a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan. This was a surprise to me.

They had not asked about this in the United States. They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp.

I was so scared I urinated on myself twice. The beating was less severe each of the following days.

At the end of each day, they would always say, ‘Tomorrow will be harder for you.’ So each night, I could not sleep. I did not sleep for the first four days, and slept no more than two hours a day for about two months. Most of time, I was not taken back to my cell, but to the waiting room where I could hear all the prisoners being tortured and screaming.

One time, I heard them banging a man’s head repeatedly on a desk really hard. Around Oct. 17, the beatings subsided. Their next tactic was to take me in a room, blindfolded, and people would talk about me.

I could hear them saying, ‘He knows lots of people who are terrorists;’ ‘We will get their numbers;’ ‘He is a liar;’ ‘He has been out of the country for long.’ Then they would say, ‘Let’s be frank, let’s be friends, tell us the truth,’ and come around the desk, and slap me on the face. They played lots of mind games.

The interrogation and beating ended three days before I had my first consular visit, on Oct. 23.

I was taken from my cell and my beard was shaved. I was taken to another building, and there was the colonel in the hallway with some other men and they all seemed very nervous and agitated.

I did not know what was happening and they would not tell me. They never say what is happening. You never know what will happen next.

I was told not to tell anything about the beating, then I was taken into a room for a 10-minute meeting with the consul. The colonel was there, and three other Syrian officials including an interpreter.

I cried a lot at that meeting. I could not say anything about the torture. I thought if I did, I would not get any more visits, or I might be beaten again.

After that visit, about a month after I arrived, they called me up to sign and place my thumb print on a document about seven pages long.

They would not let me read it, but I had to put my thumb print and signature on the bottom of each page. It was handwritten.

Another document was about three pages long, with questions: Who are your friends? How long have you been out of the country?

Last question was empty lines. They answered the questions with their own handwriting except for the last one where I was forced to write that I had been to Afghanistan.

The consular visits were my lifeline, but I also found them very frustrating.

There were seven consular visits, and one visit from members of Parliament. After the visits, I would bang my head and my fist on the wall in frustration. I needed the visits, but I could not say anything there.

I got new clothes after the Dec. 10 consular visit. Until then, I had been wearing the same clothes since being on the jet from the United States.

On three different occasions in December, I had a very hard time. Memories crowded my mind and I thought I was going to lose control, and I just screamed and screamed. I could not breathe well after, and felt very dizzy.

I was not exposed to sunlight for six months. The only times I left the grave was for interrogation, and for the visits.

Daily life in that place was hell. When I was detained in New York I weighed about 180 pounds. I think I lost about 40 pounds while I was at the Palestine Branch.

On Aug. 19, I was taken upstairs to see the investigator and I was given a paper and asked to write what he dictated.

If I protested, he kicked me. I was forced to write that I went to a training camp in Afghanistan. They made me sign and put my thumbprint on the last page.

The same day I was transferred to a different place, which I learnt later was the Investigation Branch.

I was placed there in a 12 feet by 20 feet collective cell. We were about 50 people in that place. The next day, I was taken to the Sednaya prison. I was very lucky that I was not tortured when I arrived there. All the other prisoners were tortured when they arrived.

Sednaya prison was like heaven for me. I could move around, and talk with other prisoners. I could buy food to eat and I gained a lot of weight there. I was only beaten once there.

On around Sept. 19 or 20, I heard the other prisoners saying that another Canadian had arrived there.

I looked up, and saw a man, but I did not recognize him. His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale. He was very weak. When I looked closer, I recognized him.

It was Abdullah Almalki. He told me he had also been at the Palestine Branch, and that he had also been in a grave like I had been -- except he had been in it longer.

He told me he had been severely tortured -- with the tire, and the cable. He was also hanged upside down. He was tortured much worse than me. He had also been tortured when he was brought to Sednaya, so that was only two weeks before.

I do not know why they have Abdullah there. What I can say for sure is that no human deserves to be treated the way he was, and I hope that Canada does all they can to help him.

On Sept. 28, I was taken out and blindfolded and put in what felt like a bus and taken back to the Palestine Branch.

They would not tell me what was happening, and I was scared I was going back to the grave. Instead, I was put in one of the waiting rooms where they torture people. I could hear the prisoners being tortured, and screaming, again.

The same day I was called in to an office to answer more questions, about what I would say if I came back to Canada. They did not tell me I would be released.

I was put back in the waiting room, and I was kept there for one week, listening to all the prisoners screaming.

It was awful. On Sunday, Oct. 5, I was taken out and into a car and driven to a court. I was put in a room with a prosecutor. I asked for a lawyer and he said I did not need one.

I asked what was going on and he read from my confession. I tried to argue I was beaten and did not go to Afghanistan, but he did not listen.

He did not tell me what I was charged with, but told me to stamp my fingerprint and sign on a document he would not let me see. Then he said I would be released.

Then I was taken back to the Palestine Branch where I met the head of the Syrian Military Intelligence and officials from the Canadian Embassy. And then I was released.

I want to conclude by thanking all of the people who worked for my release, especially my wife Monia, and human rights groups, and all the people who wrote letters, and all the members of parliament who stood up for justice.

Of course, I thank all of the journalists for covering my story.

The past year has been a nightmare, and I have spent the past few weeks at home trying to learn how to live with what happened to me.

I know that the only way I will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is if I can find out why this happened to me.

I want to know why this happened to me. I believe the only way I can ever know why this happened is to have all the truth come out in a public inquiry.

My priority right now is to clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this does not happen to any other Canadian citizens in the future.

I believe the best way to go about achieving this goal is to put pressure on the government to call for a public inquiry.

What is at stake here is the future of our country, the interests of Canadian citizens, and most importantly Canada’s international reputation for being a leader in human rights where citizens from different ethnic groups are treated no different than other Canadians.

Thank you for your patience.

[lukpac]

Jesus, that sounds like the script of a Hollywood Blockbuster...

[Rspaight]

You want to know the worst part? The infuriating, nauseating, stomach-clenching scary part?

This is *all over* the Canadian media.

I did a search on "Maher Arar" on CNN.com: Zero hits. None. Zip. Zilch.

MSNBC.com: One AP story, from yesterday.

Foxnews.com: Two AP stories, one from yesterday and one from a year ago.

CBSnews.com: A year-old AP story.

Liberal media, my ass. They buried this story.

Ryan

[TSmithPage]

I did hear a report about this, yesterday I think, on NPR, but you're right about the media. They may be liberal in some respects, but when it comes to matters of abuse of power by the U.S. government, they are extraordinarily silent.

[balthazar]

Liberal media, my ass. They buried this story.

This is the kind of thing that needs to get out, somehow. Letters to the editor, whatever. But it wouldn't suprise me if it got supressed one way or another.

Reminds me a bit of Good Morning, Vietnam.

[Xenu]

I attempted a slashdot.org submission. Nothin' doing.

[Rspaight]

The latest (from the Canadian media, of course). Note Trent "I miss Jim Crow" Lott's compassionate response in the last paragraph.

U.S. probe of Arar case urged
Lawyers also seek criminal inquiry of Canadian's deportation

By SHAWN McCARTHY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

NEW YORK — U.S. lawyers for Maher Arar have urged Congress and Attorney-General John Ashcroft to investigate whether the deportation of the Canadian from New York to Syria violated American laws.

In a letter dated Nov. 10, the Center for Constitutional Rights asked members of both the House of Representatives committee on intelligence and its Senate counterpart to review Mr. Arar's case. The centre also urged Mr. Ashcroft to begin a criminal investigation.

The Washington Post reported last week that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has a covert program known as "extraordinary rendition" in which it turns over people suspected of terrorist links to foreign intelligence services to be tortured for information.

Mr. Arar was born in Syria but is a Canadian citizen. He was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport last fall while returning home to Montreal from Tunisia. U.S. authorities accused him of having ties to al-Qaeda and deported him to Jordan, and then Syria, where he was held for 10 months and where, he says, he was routinely tortured.

"There is good reason to believe that the United States knew and wanted Arar tortured to obtain information," the centre's legal director, Jeffrey Fogel, said in his letter.

"There is also no basis for the belief that Mr. Arar has any connection to terrorism."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which is also defending prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are being held without trial, said the officials who deported Mr. Arar not only violated international conventions but also U.S. law.

"This practice of rendering cannot and must not be allowed to continue," Mr. Fogel said in his letter to Congressman Porter Goss, chair of the House permanent select committee on intelligence. "It is against every value this country is supposed to embody."

Opposition MPs have demanded an inquiry into what role Canada played in providing the Federal Bureau of Investigation with information on Mr. Arar and in the deportation. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has rebuffed those calls, saying the decision to deport Mr. Arar was taken by U.S. officials alone.

This week, Solicitor-General Wayne Easter announced plans to review intelligence-sharing agreements between Canada and the United States to ensure human rights are protected.

U.S. congressional offices and the Justice Department were closed yesterday for Veterans Day.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said he believes the case deserves consideration and for Congress "to determine what the facts are and what response, if any, ought to be achieved on the part of our country as we look at these circumstances," Reuters news agency reported.

Senator Trent Lott, a Republican member of the Senate intelligence oversight committee, provided little hope that this body would take up Mr. Arar's case. "We don't have time to do it," Mr. Lott told Free Speech Radio, an independent Washington-based news bureau. "We've got more to do than we can possibly get around to."

[Rspaight]

Here's the WaPo story that discussed "extraordinary rendition." Doesn't it just give you warm fuzzies to know that we have a policy in place to ship untried "suspects" off to foreign governments for torture? We're upright, moral Americans, so we wouldn't possibly torture anyone, but we'll happily send them to someone who will. (And then invade and "liberate" our outsourced torture center a few years later, citing human rights violations. After all, they torture people -- they must be EVIL.)

Deported Terror Suspect Details Torture in Syria
Canadian's Case Called Typical of CIA

By DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A01

TORONTO, Nov. 4 -- A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a Syrian prison.

Maher Arar, 33, who was released last month, said at a news conference in Ottawa that he pleaded with U.S. authorities to let him continue on to Canada, where he has lived for 15 years and has a family. But instead, he was flown under U.S. guard to Jordan and handed over to Syria, where he was born. Arar denied any connection to terrorism and said he would fight to clear his name.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that Arar was deported because he had been put on a terrorist watch list after information from "multiple international intelligence agencies" linked him to terrorist groups.

Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA "extraordinary rendition" -- the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners.

Arar's case has brought repeated apologies from the Canadian government, which says it is investigating what information the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave to U.S. authorities. Canada's foreign minister, Bill Graham, also said he would question the Syrian ambassador about Arar's statements about torture. In an interview on CBC Radio, Imad Moustafa, the Syrian chargé d'affaires in Washington, denied that Arar had been tortured.

Arar said U.S. officials apparently based the terrorism accusation on his connection to Abdullah Almalki, another Syrian-born Canadian. Almalki is being detained by Syrian authorities, although no charges against him have been reported. Arar said he knew Almalki only casually before his detention but encountered him at the Syrian prison where both were tortured.

Arar, whose case has become a cause celebre in Canada, demanded a public inquiry. "I am not a terrorist," he said. "I am not a member of al Qaeda. I have never been to Afghanistan."

He said he was flying home to Montreal via New York on Sept. 26, 2002, from a family visit to Tunisia.

"This is when my nightmare began," he said. "I was pulled aside by immigration and taken [away]. The police came and searched my bags. I asked to make a phone call and they would not let me." He said an FBI agent and a New York City police officer questioned him. "I was so scared," he said. "They told me I had no right to a lawyer because I was not an American citizen."

Arar said he was shackled, placed on a small jet and flown to Washington, where "a new team of people got on the plane" and took him to Amman, the capital of Jordan. Arar said U.S. officials handed him over to Jordanian authorities, who "blindfolded and chained me and put me in a van. . . . They made me bend my head down in the back seat. Then these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me."

Hours later, he said, he was taken to Syria and there he was forced to write that he had been to a training camp in Afghanistan. "They kept beating me, and I had to falsely confess," he said. "I was willing to confess to anything to stop the torture."

Arar said his prison cell "was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had no light, it was three feet wide, it was six feet deep, it was seven feet high. . . . It had a metal door. There was a small opening in the ceiling. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time, the cats peed through the opening into the cell."

Steven Watt, a human rights fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Washington, said Arar's case raised questions about U.S. counterterrorism measures. "Here we have the United States involved in the removal of somebody to a country where it knows persons in custody of security agents are tortured," Watt said. "The U.S. was possibly benefiting from the fruits of that torture. I ask the question: Why wasn't he removed to Canada?"

A senior U.S. intelligence official discussed the case in terms of the secret rendition policy. There have been "a lot of rendition activities" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the official said. "We are doing a number of them, and they have been very productive."

Renditions are a legitimate option for dealing with suspected terrorists, intelligence officials argue. The U.S. government officially rejects the assertion that it knowingly sends suspects abroad to be tortured, but officials admit they sometimes do that. "The temptation is to have these folks in other hands because they have different standards," one official said. "Someone might be able to get information we can't from detainees," said another.

Syria, where use of torture during imprisonment has been documented by the State Department, maintains a secret but growing intelligence relationship with the CIA, according to intelligence experts.

"The Syrian government has provided some very useful assistance on al Qaeda in the past," said Cofer Black, former director of counterterrorism at the CIA who is now the counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department.

One senior intelligence official said Tuesday that Arar is still believed to have connections to al Qaeda. The Justice Department did not have enough evidence to detain him when he landed in the United States, the official said, and "the CIA doesn't keep people in this country."

With those limitations, and with a secret presidential "finding" authorizing the CIA to place suspects in foreign hands without due process, Arar may have been one of the people whisked overseas by the CIA.

In the early 1990s, renditions were exclusively law enforcement operations in which suspects were snatched by covert CIA or FBI teams and brought to the United States for trial or questioning. But CIA teams, working with foreign intelligence services, now capture suspected terrorists in one country and render them to another, often after U.S. interrogators have tried to gain information from them.

Renditions are considered a covert action. Congress, which oversees the CIA, knows of only the broad authority to carry out renditions but is not informed about individual cases, according to intelligence officials.Priest reported from Washington. Staff writers John Mintz and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Patrick M]

extraordinary rendition = extradition?

[Rspaight]

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says
After Tip From Ally, U.S. Sent Muslim to Syria for Questioning

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; A01

TORONTO, Sept. 18 -- Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

The inquiry, which focused on the Canadian intelligence services, found that agents who were under pressure to find terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, falsely labeled an Ottawa computer consultant, Maher Arar, as a dangerous radical. They asked U.S. authorities to put him and his wife, a university economist, on the al-Qaeda "watchlist," without justification, the report said.

Arar was also listed as "an Islamic extremist individual" who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O'Connor.

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

O'Connor concluded that "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.

Although the report centered on Canadian actions, the counsel for the commission, Paul Cavalluzzo, said the results show that the U.S. practice of renditions "ought to be reviewed."

"This is really the first report in the Western world that has had access to all of the government documents we wanted and saw the practice of extraordinary rendition in full color," he said in an interview from Ottawa. "The ramifications were that an innocent Canadian was tortured, his life was put upside down, and it set him back years and years."

Arar, who came to Canada from Syria when he was 17, said in Ottawa that he was thankful that he had been vindicated. He expressed surprise and anger at learning Monday that Canadian authorities also had asked U.S. authorities to put his wife on the al-Qaeda watchlist.

"Today Justice O'Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation," he said at a news conference. He said the individual Canadian officials should be held accountable: "Justice requires no less."

O'Connor said it was beyond his mandate to recommend discipline for any individual.

"He really is a victim of authorities in three governments, as well as being an innocent man," Irwin Cotler, a member of parliament from the Liberal Party, said after the report was issued.

Stockwell Day, the federal government's public safety minister, said the treatment of Arar was "regrettable. We hope, with any future situations, never to see this happen again."

Since Sept. 11, the CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an estimated 3,000 people in its effort to dismantle terrorist networks. Many of them have been secretly taken by "extraordinary rendition" to other countries, hidden from U.S. legal requirements and often subject to torture.

Those renditions are often carried out by CIA agents dressed head to toe in black, wearing masks, who blindfold their subjects and dress them in black. The practice is generating increased opposition by other countries; Italy is seeking to prosecute CIA officers who allegedly abducted a Muslim cleric in Milan in February 2003, and German prosecutors are investigating the CIA's activities in their country.

Although details of the renditions and the destinations of those held are secret, President Bush has confirmed the existence of CIA-run prisons throughout the world. Some of the subjects of renditions have been held in those prisons.

O'Connor also recommended that the government review the case of three other Muslim Canadian citizens, who were detained when they traveled through Syria, to determine what role Canadian authorities played in their imprisonment.

But it was the case of Arar, a reserved, soft-spoken father of two, that created outrage in Canada after he returned in 2003 and said he wanted the public to know what had happened to him.

The report said agents of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police "overstated" Arar's importance in the broad investigation they began of potential Canadian suspects after Sept. 11.

Canadian police opened a file on Arar after seeing him talking to two other Muslim Canadians they were watching, authorities have acknowledged. Arar insisted the men were casual acquaintances in the small Muslim community in Montreal, where he lived before moving to British Columbia.

O'Connor said Monday that police agents told the Americans that Arar was "suspected of being linked to the al Qaeda movement." The judge concluded: "The RCMP had no basis for this description."

The Mounties also falsely claimed Arar had refused to be interviewed and had "suddenly" left for Tunisia. It listed him as a business associate of another man they called a "Bin Laden associate." Those descriptions were "either completely inaccurate" or overstated his casual connections, O'Connor said in an 822-page, three-volume report.

That information "very likely" led to his rendition, the report said. U.S. officials refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry.

Cavalluzzo said the Canadian agents apparently operated without proper training. "The best one can say is that it was sheer incompetence. They did not appreciate the fact that the branding of someone as a 'target' or 'suspect' or 'Islamic extremist' to Americans in 2002 could lead to disastrous consequences."

After Arar was detained in New York, Canadian authorities apparently were unaware the Americans were preparing to send him to Syria, according to the commission finding.

The RCMP contact, Inspector Michel Cabana, "was under the impression that Mr. Arar would only be detained for a short time," O'Connor's report said. "In his view, Mr. Arar was being held in a country with many of the same values as Canada."

Arar filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court, but the case was dismissed by a judge citing "national security" issues. Arar is also seeking compensation from the Canadian government.

Some crucial questions about the incident remain unanswered, at least publicly. Over the repeated objections of O'Connor, the federal government censored much of the testimony given during the proceedings as well as some of the final report. O'Connor's report said a federal court should be asked to decide whether to disclose some of the censored items.

Arar was not permitted to testify; the judge ruled it would be unfair to subject him to questioning based on secret information. He has testified before a European Parliament committee in Brussels.

[Rspaight]

extraordinary rendition = extradition?

Here's a three-year-late reply. Extradition implies that we're turning a prisoner over to another country to be tried in that country for crimes committed in that country. There's a full legal process associated with that, including hearings.

Extraordinary rendition means we're just sending them to some other country to be tortured, since America supposedly "doesn't torture." It's basically outsourced torture. There's no intent to try the prisoner for any specific crime, AFAIK, and it's all done under the covers.

Ryan