Preventing 'rendition'
The US and Canada take steps to ensure 'torture-by-proxy' doesn't happen again.
The war on terror since 9/11 has forced law enforcement agencies in many countries to tighten security, sometimes, critics say, at the expense of existing civil liberties. But would the US purposefully send suspected terrorists to their countries of origin so that they could be tortured in ways they would never be inside the United States?
In a recent
San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, Christopher Pyle cites an unnamed intelligence official as saying: "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." According to Mr. Pyle, "[US] intelligence agencies have a name for this
torture-by-proxy. They call it 'extraordinary rendition.'"
In an article last week on how the Egyptian government stifles democracy, the
Washington Post reports that "several" independent analysts, government officials, lawyers, and journalists interviewed in Egypt in December "pointed to the US practice of 'rendition' – the surreptitious shipment of an unknown number of suspected Arab terrorists to Egypt and other countries where police routinely practice torture – as
proof of US bad faith on human rights issues."
The most famous case of rendition is the case of Syrian-born Canadian software engineer Maher Arar. Mr. Arar was traveling on a Canadian passport when he was detained for alleged ties to Al Qaeda on Sept. 26, 2002 at New York's JFK Airport. He spent more than 10 months in a Syrian jail after US authorities deported him to the country of his birth in October. Arar says he was tortured and abused repeatedly throughout that time.
The US government says they had assurances from Syria that he would not be mistreated. According to a
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news report, US Attorney General John Ashcroft has refused to explain why the dual citizen was sent to Syria instead of to Canada, but stated that the
deportation was legal and done for reasons of "national security."
In a
Los Angeles Times piece last month Arar described his time in Syrian custody. He
says he was beaten repeatedly, kept in a cell that was "just three feet wide, six feet long, seven feet high and unlit." He wrote that he "sometimes felt on the verge of death after beatings with a black electrical cable about two inches thick."
Of the many questions he has, one seems to take precedence over all the others.
For starters, I want to know why the United States sent me to one of the seven countries that the Bush administration has designated a sponsor of state terrorism – and that President Bush singled out just last month as a country that tortures its own people.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and its president, the famous far-left human rights lawyer Michael Ratner,
hopes to file a lawsuit on behalf of Arar, claiming that US officials may have sent him to Syria so that he could be tortured.
Arar recently
repeated calls for the Canadian government to conduct a public inquiry, saying he has "nothing to hide." So far, reports the Canadian broadcasting company
CTV, there are no plans for a full-scale public investigation.
The Canadian daily,
The Globe and Mail, reports Tuesday that Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham confirmed that Ottawa and Washington have
agreed on new rules aimed at ensuring that the Maher Arar scandal is never repeated. The White House has pledged "formal notification and expeditious consultation" with Canadian authorities, immediately, whenever a Canadian national is detained in the US for security reasons. After a meeting at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, US President George W. Bush said that he promised Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin that the
US would notify Canada "prior to any consideration of deportation."
Also...
•
Saudi Arabia: On a dagger's edge. A four-part series. (
The Christian Science Monitor)
•
Canada ...missing From the Axis of Evil? (
LewRockwell.com)
•
Chrétien was kept in the dark about Arar (
The Globe and Mail)
•
N. Korea still denies enriching uranium (
The Washington Post)
•
Bush team revising plans for granting self-rule to Iraqis (
The New York Times)
•
US defense role worries Indonesia (
The Sydney Morning Herald)
•
Thai attacks prompt border patrols (
BBC)
•
US helicopter goes down west of Baghdad (
CNN)
•
US war in Iraq 'strategic error' (
BBC)
•
100th US military death reported in Afghanistan (
CNN/AP)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Matthew Clark.
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