Canadian Tortured; Gonzales Passes Buck

In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar was flying through JFK airport on his way to Canada for a business trip, when he was detained by U.S. immigration officials based on faulty information in their database submitted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Arar was interrogated for 12 days by FBI officials and then deported, against his will, via Jordan, to Syria, where he was held for 10 1/2 months in a cell measuring 3 feet by 6 feet by 7 feet and tortured with steel cables, according to a Canadian inquiry. Arar was never a suspect or a target in any terrorist investigation.

Arar's lawsuit against the U.S. government was thrown out on technical grounds (.pdf) in 2005, and yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had this to say about the Justice Department's role in the case:

We were not responsible for his removal to Syria, I'm not aware that he was tortured, and I haven't read the Commission report. Mr. Arar was deported under our immigration laws. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our laws.

Some people have characterized his removal as a rendition. That is not what happened here. It was a deportation. And even if it were a rendition, we understand as a government what our obligations are with respect to anyone who is rendered by this government to another country, and that is that we seek to satisfy ourselves that they will not be tortured. And we do that in every case. And if in fact he had been rendered to Syria, we would have sought those same kind of assurances, as we do in every case.

Gonzales is incorrect that the DOJ wasn't responsible, since at the time the Immigration and Naturalization Service was still a part of the DOJ. More here in today's New York Times.

Arar wants an apology from the U.S. government, but the AG can't even be bothered to read the report from the two-year long inquiry, which the U.S. declined to participate in.

I meant to blog this a couple of days ago after reading through most of the 376 page report from the Canadian Commission of Inquiry and 2005 U.S. District Court decision that dismissed Arar's case against the U.S. government, but couldn't because it was just too disturbing.

I assume that the U.S. government doesn't want to apologize for sending Arar off to be tortured, given the ongoing debate in Congress over whether the CIA gets legal cover to torture people.

Here's what the inquiry had to say:

The American authorities who handled Mr. Ararøs 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. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Ararøs case in a less than forthcoming manner. They were not candid, either with the RCMP officers with whom they had been working jointly on the investigation that involved Mr. Arar, or with Canadian consular officials seeking to assist Mr. Arar, about their intentions or about the process that led to Mr. Ararøs removal.

Canada should formally register an objection about both what happened to Mr. Arar and how American officials treated Canadian officials. The fact of objecting is more symbolic than anything else. Unquestionably, Canada should continue to co-operate fully with American authorities in the global fight against terror. Co-operation between the two countries is vitally important. However, Canada is entitled to expect that American authorities will treat Canada and Canadian citizens in a way that is consistent with our co-operative efforts. That did not happen in the case of Mr. Arar.

With regard to Mr. Ararøs detention in the United States, I note that, under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a contracting state has an obligation to inform a foreign national of his or her right to contact consular officials and to facilitate such contact without delay. On October 3, 2002, Mr. Arar told Canadian consul Maureen Girvan that, while in custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, he had asked to see someone from the Canadian Consulate. American officials failed to contact the Consulate General in New York and Mr. Arar was held in U.S. custody for four days without access to a lawyer or his family. Essentially, no one knew where he was.

Breaches to the Vienna Convention should not be allowed to pass without objection. At one point, Canadian officials considered sending a diplomatic note to the United States in regard to its failure to provide Canadian consular officials with timely notification of Mr. Ararøs detention. In my view, such a course of action is appropriate under the circumstances.

Moreover, the RCMP should inform American authorities with whom it shared information about Mr. Arar that all such information was or should have been subject to caveats restricting its dissemination to other agencies as well as its use, particularly in legal proceedings such as the immigration proceedings held with respect to Mr. Arar during his time in New York. In addition, the RCMP should correct any inaccurate information about Mr. Arar that was provided to American agencies. Mr. Arar, for one, has serious concerns about what will happen to him should he find himself in the United States again. He told the independent fact-finder that he fears flying even within Canada because of the possibility that a flight will be diverted to an American airport. We have no way of knowing what information American officials have concerning Mr. Arar, but Canada has an obligation to correct any inaccurate information about him that it may have provided to American authorities. It is important that the record be set straight. In this report, I discuss at length the problems that can arise from providing inaccurate information and from sharing information without caveats. That discussion need not be repeated here. However, I repeat that inaccuracies should be corrected and caveats attached.

With regard to Syria, I conclude that the Syrian authorities tortured Mr. Arar when interrogating him and held him in inhumane and degrading conditions for about a year. Moreover, I conclude that they misled Canadian officials about Mr. Ararøs presence in Syria after he first arrived there. If Canada has not already done so, it should send a formal objection to the Syrians.

The Canadian and U.S. governments should be deeply ashamed of themselves. It's no surprise that Syria tortured Arar, and it certainly wouldn't have been a surprise to the U.S. officials who sent him there, even if they did get the ass-covering letter from Syria promising to treat Arar well.

Will our government have the courage to stand up, admit they screwed up and defend democratic values?

A call to the Justice Department to ask that was not immediately returned.

It's an election year, so probably not.

But somebody needs to tell this Administration that we're supposed to be the good guys, dammit.

Photo: drs2biz