[THS] Amy Goodman: Extraordinary rendition of Canadian Maher Arar

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25740.htm

Broken Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives

By Amy Goodman

June 16, 2010 "Truthdig" -- Federal authorities are investigating whether officials of
the government south of the border participated in a citizen’s kidnapping and
torture—Canadian authorities, that is, investigating the possible role of U.S. officials in
the “extraordinary rendition” of Canadian citizen Maher Arar. “Extraordinary
rendition” is White House-speak for arresting someone and secretly sending him to
another country, where he is likely to be tortured. Arar revealed that, for the past
four years, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been investigating
possible roles of U.S. and Syrian officials in his rendition and torture. This
announcement follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that it will not consider
Arar’s case, ending his pursuit of justice through U.S. courts.

Arar is the Canadian citizen seized by U.S. officials while changing planes in New
York, heading home from a family vacation in September 2002. He was secretly sent
to Syria by the Bush administration, where he was held for almost a year in a
gravelike cell. He was repeatedly tortured, then returned home to Canada, without
charge, a broken man. In 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit in U.S.
federal court on Arar’s behalf as he recovered in Canada. While his legal case came
to an end this week, his fight against impunity continues.

Ontario Justice Dennis O’Connor headed the Canadian government’s inquiry into
Arar’s arrest, removal to Syria and subsequent torture. From 2004 to 2006, O’Connor
interviewed scores of people and reviewed thousands of documents. The inquiry
completely exonerated Arar. The conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper apologized, and Arar was awarded $11.5 million in reparations and legal fees.
Now, we learn, the RCMP, the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, is conducting an
investigation that could lead to criminal charges. Arar told me: “They’ve been
collecting evidence. They’ve been interviewing people both in Canada and
internationally ... their focus is on the Syrian torturers, as well as those American
officials who were complicit in my torture.”

If the RCMP charges U.S. officials with complicity in the abduction and torture of
Arar, it would put the strong extradition treaty between the U.S. and Canada to the
test. In the meantime, the Center for Constitutional Rights is encouraging people to
contact the White House and their representatives in Congress to demand redress for
Arar, including an apology, his removal from the terrorist watch list, financial
damages, an investigation and assurances that no one else will suffer a similar fate.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who chairs the powerful Judiciary Committee,
expressed his disappointment with this week’s Supreme Court decision, saying the
Arar case “remains a stain on this nation’s legacy as a human-rights leader around
the world ... the United States has continued to deny culpability in this case.” Back in
a January 2007 hearing, Leahy fumed at then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
“We knew damn well, if he went to Canada, he wouldn’t be tortured. He’d be held.
He’d be investigated. We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he’d be tortured.”

The Obama administration continues controversial Bush-era policies, with detention
without charge at Guantanamo and the Bagram air base, and with, as Leahy has
noted, reliance on “state secrets” privilege to dodge legal actions to expose and
punish torture. On the same day as this week’s Supreme Court announcement,
another court in Washington, D.C., acquitted 24 anti-torture activists who were
arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 21, 2010, the day by which President Barack
Obama originally pledged Guantanamo would be closed. Their banner read “Broken
Promises, Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” Several were arrested inside the Capitol
Rotunda while conducting a funeral service for three Guantanamo prisoners who may
have been tortured to death. The U.S. government claims they committed suicide.

Maher Arar has completed his Ph.D. in Canada and founded an online news
magazine, prism-magazine.com. He has been focusing on the case of Canadian
citizen Omar Khadr, who was arrested in Afghanistan as a child and has grown to
adulthood in the Guantanamo prison. Arar, married with two children, told me, “The
struggle for justice and struggle against oppression has become a way of life for me,
and I can never go back to just a simple nine-to-five engineer anymore.”

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.