Remember Maher Arar? He’s the Canadian citizen that tried to change planes in JFK and got deported to Syria for his trouble. He’s back in Canada now, but apparently spent 10 months in Syria being tortured before his release could be secured.
I thought that I had gotten as angry as I could about this. I was mistaken.
Some relevant quotes from the editorial:
That is not a choice, you fucking morons.
There was no sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime. Let me repeat that. There was no sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime.. When that happens, you don’t “choose” between letting him go and shipping him off to Syria to be tortured. Not in a civilized country, you don’t.
Hundreds of American servicemen have died while toppling a regime where people were “disappeared” off the streets and tortured without due process, and now the Washington Post is debating how best to erode due process in the United States. What is wrong with these people?
Dex, it’s not that simple. Some yokel TSA or immigration agent gets it into his little peabrain that All Arabs are Terrorists, checks the guy’s name against a list that is known to be inaccurate, and the next thing the poor guy knows, he’s locked up in some third-world country that never even heard of human rights.
Tell you what. We’ll arrange to have you arrested, charged, and tried for a crime you didn’t commit. Then, when your ass is rotting in jail, you can lament your guilt. Until then, recognize that the system isn’t anywhere near airtight. Okay?
I suspect that Dex’s post is just sarcasm. At least, I hope so.
Of course, even then there’s the possibility that someone out there believes that tripe, and those same people think everything is hunky-dunky with the story Larry linked to. That’s frightening enough. (Hallowe’en is over, Dex, you don’t have to keep scaring me. Really. Please?)
I’ve been following the Maher Arar story from the beginning. He was apparently on a list of people who knew a guy who was suspected of being a terrorist but was never charged and was happily living on in Ottawa. Oh yeah - that’s guilt right there.
And the best part is that, supposedly, the Canadian government knew what was going on, too.
“The thing is, you donft have suspects who are innocent of a crime. Thatfs contradictory. If a person is innocent of crime, then he is not a suspect.” - Ed Meese
So… I don’t see what the big problem here is. The government said it’s ok, and the government is our friend.
Man, I wish our government would grow a pair - we aren’t even pushing for an inquiry on this or even the William Sampson thing. FWIW, I think the OP is right in the belief that due process and related rights are getting the shaft in the U.S… This one incident sadly fails to shock me - there’s a pit thread on a police raid on a school still open now… librarians are organizing against a giant cudgel of a Gov’t act advertised to protect freedoms, but so far has been used only against smalltime drug dealers and strip clubs…
Darn. This post is making me depressed. Where’re the long-haired hippies when you really need them?
Y’know, these are the times when I wish H.L. Mencken were still alive and working. I’d love to hear his take on Bush fils and the civil liberties mess he’s made since 9/11.
There are a whole bunch of things like this where one could condone action X in situation Y. But if the power is given to public officials to do X in situation Y, they’ll inevitably try to use it in situations A through Q as well.
This is one example. I can see the logic of being able to threaten one of Saddam’s bodyguards with being handed over to the Syrians if he doesn’t spill what he knows. But they don’t know where to stop, and so Maher Arar gets tortured in Syria for 10 months.
It’s the same on the mass detentions after 9/11. The Justice Department said many of these people were being held not because they were suspects in any way, but because they might know one piece in the ‘mosaic’ of information they needed to gather. But the ‘mosaic’ detainees were treated like hardened criminals, keeping them in their cells 23 hours a day, depriving them of sleep by keeping the lights on 24/7, and so forth. I can see the point in treating a terrorist or mobster harshly to make sure he breaks, but many of these were just ordinary Joes, or Ahmeds, who might know something that would help the DoJ piece together an investigation. Or so we were told; I’m not believing much they say, these days.
The Patriot Act, per Nanoda’s link, is another for-instance. Some of its provisions make sense in certain facets of the War on Terrorism. But they’re getting used instead to investigate Nevada’s strip joints, fercryinoutloud.
This weekend we were at a friends’ home–they get BBC America (which we don’t) so the shows were all new to us. We watched a Tivo’ed episode of “Airport.” In this episode, authorities at Heathrow were advised that a British Airways flight attendant was using a false name and identity. They went on the plane, nabbed the guy, detained him, questioned him, and confronted him with evidence. The thing that struck me nearly dumb with awe and surprise was the professionalism of the British Authorities. They were exceedingly polite and considerate to the man (who turned out to be a Lebanese national on the run from his family) even though details were adding up that might raise alarm (he’d gained airport access via employment, he spoke Arabic, applied to pilot’s program, was concealing his identity, etc.)
The sad thing was, I simply could not imagine a suspect being treated that way in the U.S. At least not now. They didn’t tell us the full story, but it looked like the guy had a legitimate personal reason for his actions, completely unassociated with terrorism. And the British police assumed that was true until they had reason to believe otherwise. What a concept! Presumed Innocent!
Could we put a tiny bit of blame on the Syrians? I don’t think you will find “much love” between Assad and Bush at any level. Syria is another Baathist nation.
If the guy is al Qaeda, as the editorial notes, it’s tough to decide what to do. If Canada really wants him, send him there with a subcutaneous chip. You know, like “Snake Pliskin” or something.
You put a man in a cage with a mad dog, you can’t really blame the dog when it bites him. We knew what would happen to a Canadian citizen who could not eb charged with anything on either side of the corder.
Frankly, I’m a bit surprised (and disappointed) Canada hasn’t raised much more of a stink. This was practically an act of war.
