Via the NYT: Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case
A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.
[…]
The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.
“I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,” Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.
[…]
The Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2024, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan in an American government plane and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable. He was freed in October 2024, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no connection to terrorism and returned him to Canada.
The whole piece needs reading, as it details how suspicion based on scant information led to a man being thrown into hell in the name of the war on terror. Some may conclude that the US government knows more than the Times’ reporter and therefore will dismiss the story. However, given that the US government is currently holding 14,000 individuals in connection to the war on terror at the moment, one suspects that if they thought there was a shred of evidence that suggested Mr. Arar was connected to terrorism, there would have been no compunctions against holding him longer.
I would point out the it is chilling notion that we would hand anyone over to the Syrians, as there could have been no doubt as to how they would treat him.
We have clearly become so paranoid about terrorism that some in our government have decided that it is acceptable to, based on suspicion alone, wrench a man from his life and then give him over to others for the purpose of abusing him in the hope of finding out some scrap of information.
That is sickening and disturbing and such a tale should remind us of what the current debate is really about and/or awaken those who don’t see what is at stake.
Update: WaPo’s version of the story is here and sums it up as follows:
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.
Some may conclude that the US government knows more than the Times’ reporter
This is doubtful since the US refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry.
Comment by Ratoe — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 7:52 am
What I meant was that there will be those who will want to rationalize the story away along those lines of thinking.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 9:15 am
[…] A note of no importance: Arar was never convicted of anything. With torture you are as guilty as someone thinks you are. If you did nothing before they start, you may confess to anything and everything well you’re done. You get what your torturers think you deserve. And worse. […]
Pingback by The Heretik » Blog Archive » An Old Rendition — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 9:33 am
[…] Here’s the problem: while nuclear-powered terrorists are a frightening prospect indeed, that is a distractor as it raises the stakes to genocidal levels. The truth of the matter is that we aren’t always talking about terrorists. We are sometimes talking about the innocent. As such, it seems reason that a country that is supposed to be the greatest democracy on the planet would want to exercise some modicum of caution in this arena. Filed under: US Politics, War on Terror | |Send TrackBack […]
Pingback by PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » The Wrong Questions — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 9:53 am
My previous, lengthy comment here was eaten by the evil gods of the Internet, so please forgive me if what follows is brief and not well-developed:
When I first heard this story, I agreed with your position. It was horrifying. The more I’ve learned, though, the more sympathy I’ve developed for the US’s actions.
Lost in the NYTimes and WaPo’s reporting is that Arar was not a Syrian-born Canadian citizen — he held (and so far as I know, still holds) dual citizenship with Canada and Syria.
US officials, then, were faced with this problem: the RCMP told them that they thought Arar was a terrorist, but that they could not hold him, and that once sent back he would be released. Normally, this would mean legal tough-luck for the US, and we would have to send him back to Canada to be released and (presumably) to fulfill his terrorist ambitions (which in the case of Arar he appears not actually to have had).
In this case, though, the detainee is a citizen of TWO different countries, one of which has a 3000 mile border with the US, and one which does not. So long as Arar was a Syrian citizen, it seems to me reasonable to send him to a country of his citizenship.
The whole affair is made uglier by Arar’s apparent innocence, and Canada’s games with plausible deniability. My reading of the RCMP’s behavior was that they were perfectly happy to have the US get rid of a suspected terrorist for them, so that they could have clean hands for wringing later.
So, though I agree Arar was “thrown into hell in the name of the war on terror” “on scant information,” in this case “hell” was a country in which he retained citizenship.
So, which is it? Do we detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, or send them back to their country of citizenship?
Comment by Richard Nokes — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 12:15 pm
Scott,
“Hell” in this case isn’t just being sent back to Syria. “Hell” is being sent into the custody if Syrian officials knowing fell well what fate awaited him.
Somehow I don’t buy the reasoning that the only choice we had was rendition to Syria. Especially given that rendition is a policy used specifically to extract information from terror suspects.
S
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 12:31 pm
A simple question Dr. Taylor, what other choices did we have besides Canada or Syria? I don’t mean to sound saucy but what else could we do? They didn’t want him and we couldn’t keep him.
Comment by Steven Plunk — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 3:39 pm
Well, if there was insufficient evidence for him to be held in Canada, are you telling me that the US had to send him to Syria to be tortured?
The bottom line of your question, and of Scott’s post, seems to be that because we were suspicious, we had no choice. My response would be that we need to be acting with evidence, serious evidence, not just suspicion.
That’s why I think that it is a cautionary tale.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 3:45 pm
I don’t think I suggested we had “no choice.” Rather, I meant to suggest that we had four choices: to release Arar in the US, to hold Arar indefinitely, to release Arar to Canada, or to release Arar to Syria.
I take it, then, that you would have released Arar into either the US or Canada? Or perhaps I am overlooking an option?
Comment by Richard Scott Nokes — Tuesday, September 19, 2024 @ 11:51 pm
If all the Canadian and US government had was suspicion that Arar was a terrorist, then yes: he should have been released in Canada. Why would his dual-citizenship mean that just because there were suspicions that he might be a terrorist therefore lead to him being plucked from his life in Canada and given to Syrian authorities? It isn’t as if, if I understand the story, he was just deported to Syria. He appears he was handed over to the Syrian government. And even deportation of someone who holds Canadian citizenship should require some standard of proof of guilt.
You yourself stated: So long as Arar was a Syrian citizen, it seems to me reasonable to send him to a country of his citizenship.
That logic could mean Canada or Syria, since he holds dual citizenship. Given that Canada is his country of residence, then clearly shipping him off to Syria is a major life disruption to being with, let alone the whole beaten in prison part.
What is the justification for acting in this way based on suspicion alone? And if the Canadian court is to be believed, there wasn’t that much evidence to begin with.
Are you arguing that it was wholly legitimate, because of his dual citizenship, to ship him off to Syria based on suspicion alone? If that was sufficient, then why does his dual citizenship even matter?
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Wednesday, September 20, 2024 @ 6:06 am
You asked, “Are you arguing that it was wholly legitimate, because of his dual citizenship, to ship him off to Syria based on suspicion alone?”
Yes.
You also asked “If that was sufficient, then why does his dual citizenship even matter?”
Because it gives us two options. Obviously if the person is a citizen or permanent resident of the US, we don’t have that option. By your reasoning, I don’t see how we could even release him in Canada — from the line you are drawing, it would seem that deporting him to any country of citizenship would be wrong, and that we would have to release him into the United States to go about his business.
By your reasoning, under what authority could we deport him to Canada? After all, we only had suspicions.
Comment by Richard Nokes — Wednesday, September 20, 2024 @ 8:18 am
I find it troubling that suspicion alone is enough to warrant what I consider fairly extreme action.
I think this is the basis of our disagreement, not his citizenship status.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Wednesday, September 20, 2024 @ 8:43 am