There was something a little spooky in the news about the release of Justice Dennis O’Connor’s report on the rendition & torture of Maher Arar.
I felt like I had read a forecast of the report’s conclusions 3 months ago in Chicago author and attorney Joseph Margulies’s book, “Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power.”
On Monday, September 18, 2006, the Canadian government released its report on the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was a victim of the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition.
Mr. Arar was falsely accused of al-Qaeda connections. The Canadian report formally and unequivocally clears him.
U.S. federal agents seized Mr. Arar at JFK airport in September 2002 while he was changing planes, held him incommunicado in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for 2 weeks, then flew him on a private jet to Jordan. On the instructions of the U.S., the Jordanians drove Mr. Arar to Syria, where he was tortured and held for 10 months. The Syrians have since said they do not believe Mr. Arar was ever connected with terrorists.
The Canadian report finds:
* The RCMP gave U.S. officials bad information;
* The U.S. rendered Mr. Arar to Syria without consulting Canadian officials;
* U.S. officials repeatedly told the Canadians that Mr. Arar would be deported to Zurich (his departure point for the flight to JFK), not rendered to Syria for torture.
Yesterday, the House of Commons voted unanimously to offer Mr. Arar an official apology, and the Conservative government is negotiating with him over a monetary settlement.
Joseph Margulies anticipated these developments in his 2006 book, Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power, pp. 190-191. The National Lawyers Guild in Chicago adopted Joe Margulies as its Summer 2006 Local First-Time Author and has been promoting the book.
Excerpt from Guantanamo & the Abuse of Presidential Power:
As the number of renditions has increased since September 11, the kind and quality of evidence needed to effect a prisoner’s disappearance has declined. No cases illustrate this better than those of Maher Arar and Khaled Masri.
On September 26, 2002, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was changing planes at [JFK] during a trip from Tunisia to Montreal when he was stopped by U.S. immigration officials. He was arrested and kept in solitary confinement for 13 days and interrogated at length about al-Qaeda. The questions focused on Arar’s relationship with 2 other Canadians: Ahmad el-Maati and Abdullah Almalki. Arar was confused by the questions because he barely knew the 2 men. Though Arar didn’t know it at the time, both had been arrested and tortured by Syrian authorities. During their interrogations, the 2 had identified Arar as a compatriot.
At 3 in the morning on October 8, 2002, guards woke Arar in his cell and read him a decision by Immigration & Naturalization Service Eastern Region Director J. Scott Blackman stating that he was a member of al-Qaeda and would be deported to Syria, apparently because of the statements made by Almalki and el-Maati. Arar was never given an opportunity to challenge this decision in court. Arar was driven to Newark and placed on a private jet. He was flown to Amman, Jordan, and then driven in a van to Syria. For the first 12 days of his imprisonment, his interrogators beat him with their fists and a 2-inch-thick electrical cable. He was threatened with more severe forms of torture, and could hear other prisoner’s screams. The beatings stopped after the Canadian Embassy made contact with Arar on October 20, but he spent most of the next year in a dark, underground cell that was 3 feet wide, 7 feet high, and 6 feet long — the size of a grave.
Arar was released from prison and returned to Canada in October 2003. He has never been charged with any wrongdoing. The Syrian ambassador to the U.S. has stated that his government considers Arar completely innocent. No evidence against him has ever been produced beyond his acquaintance with el-Maati and Almalki, both of whom were also freed from prison and never charged….In 2004, when asked about the Arar case, [former head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism division Vincent] Cannistrano said, “you would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to believe that the Syrians were not going to use torture, even if they were making claims to the contrary.”
Joe also mentions in a footnote that Mr. Arar’s suit was dismissed. The dismissal is still in litigation. Maria LaHood at the Center for Constitutional Rights represents Mr. Arar.
Links:
* NLG Chicago: http://www.nlgchicago.org/gitmo-portal.shtml
* The Commission report: http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/26.htm
* Judge Trager’s memorandum & order dismissing Arar v. Ashcroft et al.: http://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/Decisions_of_Interest/04cv249mo.pdf
* Center for Constitutional Rights: http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=xQKYgpYPjv&Content=832
