<div>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:</div>
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<div><a href="http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pco-bcp/commissions/maher_arar/07-09-13/www.ararcommission.ca/eng/index.htm">http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pco-bcp/commissions/maher_arar/07-09-13/www.ararcommission.ca/eng/index.htm</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/ToopeReport_final.pdf">http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/ToopeReport_final.pdf</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0920-33.htm">http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0920-33.htm</a></div>
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<div>From URL immediately above:</div>
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<div>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? </div>
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<div>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. </div>
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div>