Canadian was falsely accused - Muslim held by U.S. was sent to Syria for interrogation
Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.
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Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan — where he never has been — and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.O’Connor concluded “categorically there is no evidence” that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.
You mean when people are beaten they will confess to things they haven’t done in order to get you to stop!?! Someone inform the president. This is another violation of UNCAT:
Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return (”refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
Syria has a long history of human rights abuses. And honestly, what possible reason would you send a Canadian citizen captured in the US to Syria for if not for this?
And in case you were wondering, treaties signed by the US are as much a part of the law of the land as the Constitution and laws passed by Congress:
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
—US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2
So unless we have a law that says it’s cool to transport people to other countries for torture, we screwed up.
Our government is full of war criminals. This is a very dark time in the US.
[…] Updating from yesterday, Democracy Now has an interview with Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen that American officials shipped to Syria to be totured. Here is his description of what happened: Really, I mean, when I arrived there, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought first it was a dream. I was crying all the time. I was disoriented. I wished I had something in my hand to kill myself, because I knew I was going to be tortured, and this was my preoccupation. That’s all I was thinking about when I was on the plane. And I arrived there. I was crying all the time. So, one of them started questioning me, and the others were taking notes. And the first day it was mainly routine questions, between 8 to 12. […]
Doesn’t that actually state that even if we have a law that allows terror, it doesn’t matter if we’ve signed a treaty that prohibits it? That is actually a beacon of hope to me given the attempt at torture legislation.