[Vision2020] Unbelievable! Canadian Arar Comission On US Rendering Of Arar To Syrian Torture

[Ted Moffett]

I posted information on this case recently, but upon further reading, I
still cannot believe this actually happened to an innocent person traveling
through the US... I'll wake up to discover it is a fiction... It should be
clear that this case violates basic principles of human rights, habeas
corpus among them, the undermining of which places everyone at risk of
abuses by government.  This is conduct that would be expected from a brutal
human rights abusing dictatorship, not from the world's so called leading
democracy.  Even if Arar was suspected of connections to unlawful behavior
based on good evidence, which later turned out to be false, given it has
been determined he is innocent, Arar's rendering by the US to Syria to face
the torture well known to occur there in detention centers, for 10 months,
is... Words fail... Read pages 15-25 from the Toope Report (PDF document at
the second URL below), which, if accurate, reveal how Arar's life was
destroyed, a man who from this account appears to be morally above the norm:

http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pco-bcp/commissions/maher_arar/07-09-13/www.ararcommission.ca/eng/index.htm

http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/ToopeReport_final.pdf
-------
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0920-33.htm

>From URL immediately above:

The United States transported Arar to the very same Syria which Bush has
been condemning since his first days in office, and as he did again on
Tuesday, calling Syria "a crossroad for terrorism." So, will anyone in that
somnambulant White House press corps dare ask the president why he would
turn over a prisoner to such a government? And an innocent one at that?

Yes, innocent. On Monday, the Canadian justice who headed a 30-month
investigation of this case concluded: "I am able to say categorically that
there is no evidence that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." The judge
employed characteristic Canadian restraint in concluding in his damning
three-volume, 822-page report that "The American authorities who handled Mr.
Arar's case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion. They removed him
to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would
be tortured if sent there.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080723/8c68bcd8/attachment.html