That’s not how the presumption is supposed to work, is it? The burden isn’t on Arar to prove that he didn’t deserve to be sent to Syria, but on the officials to prove he did.
Why was he on a list in the first place, anyway, and was it reasonable for him to be there? By the logic you’re advancing, Government Official A could arbitrarily decide you were a threat and Government Official B could act on this, because it is reasonable for him to assume A has a good reason.
This isn’t even a matter of semantic hair-splitting, because I can’t see how you’re even arguably correct.
It already happened. If there was a proper legal challenge to his deportation prior to the deportation there might have been a need for the government to present evidence. As it stands, I do not see any legal cause of action that can be used to examine the deportation of Arar. At this point, what do you believe compels the government to defend its decision?
I don’t know. Neither do you.
I am not subject to situation at issue. I am an American citizen, and I am not a citizen of any other country. There is no situation where I could be in a situation like Arar. But I could be in a similar situation if the FBI provides the local police with information that the local police use to procure a search warrant, I cannot have the evidence gathered under that search warrant thrown out if the FBI was lying to the local police.
There is no reason to conclude the law wasn’t broken. The Inspector General certainly believes the law may have been violated. Feel free to go down to the Department of Homeland Security and straighten him out. Good luck with that.
Was there an avenue provided for such a challenge? The wiki page on Arar says his request for a lawyer was denied. Whose fault is that?
Existing laws and conventions regarding not sending people to places where torture is likely. More generally, common sense that a fellow citizen of Canada should be allowed to return to Canada.
As long as you stay in the U.S., this particular type of situation is unlikely. I’d be careful if planning any international trips, though.
And what’s your protection from the local police turning you over to someone who can make interrogations “easier”? Your confidence that there is “no situation where” this could happen isn’t compelling because apparently all it takes is a few bureaucratic mistakes and you have no rights.
Anyway, let’s just cut to the chase, here. Did the deportation of Arar serve any useful purpose? Is the U.S. safer and/or international relationships stronger as a result? If not, then is it reasonable to examine the circumstances of the deportation and seek to avoid it happening again?
Did he have an unquestionable right to an attorney?
Is there a cause of action under these laws (which do have an exception for someone classified like Arar) and conventions? What are the enforcement mechanisms?
I do not know the specific legal protections. If this happens, I am sure somebody will look them up for me. Maybe the ACLU.
It is probably true that the deportation did not serve any useful purpose and did not make the US safer and/or make international relationships stronger, but that does not mean there is a legal requirement to investigate the deportation, or that any law was actually broken.
The fifth and sixth amendments say so, or at least the spirit of the fifth and sixth say so. You could always nitpick what “Due Process” and “Assistance of Counsel” mean.
Why was he “classified”? Can anyone be “classified”? Once “classified”, it is possible to ever be “unclassified”? How does one get “classified”?
A government action created more problems than it solved. Isn’t an investigation of some sort worthwhile to examine procedures so this doesn’t happen again? And this isn’t some trivial incident with only academic repercussions - a Canadian was sent somewhere against his will, imprisoned and tortured, for no apparent reason. I don’t understand why that isn’t worth investigating.
Well, the fifth starts with “No person”, not “No citizen” or “No person who hasn’t been ‘classified’, such classification to be determined at a later date”. And the sixth starts with “In all criminal prosecutions”. Was the questioning and torture of Arar not part of a criminal prosecution? Wasn’t the point of it to gather evidence? If not, what was the point? To simply make Arar disappear? Were U.S. officials planning to bring him back to the States at some point, armed with evidence extracted by the Syrians? You seem to be advancing the idea that arresting officers can do whatever they want to a suspect, and the suspect’s civil rights don’t kick in until some arbitrary “criminal prosecution” line is crossed.
I’m not and have never claimed to know these answers. Until such information is provided, are we simply to trust that when a U.S. official “classifies” someone, it’s for a good reason? That would be very, very trusting of us.
I’m a Canadian citizen. Do I have reason to fear “classification” if ever I visit the United States? By all means, reassure me that your customs officials are not going to detain and deport me to a third country because my name is on a mysterious list somewhere. Here I am, posting to this board under my real name, q
Well, good. At the very least, a review of procedure is warranted.
Well, the fifth starts with “No person”, not “No citizen” or “No person who hasn’t been ‘classified’, such classification to be determined at a later date”. And the sixth starts with “In all criminal prosecutions”. Was the questioning and torture of Arar not part of a criminal prosecution? Wasn’t the point of it to gather evidence? If not, what was the point? To simply make Arar disappear? Were U.S. officials planning to bring him back to the States at some point, armed with evidence extracted by the Syrians? You seem to be advancing the idea that arresting officers can do whatever they want to a suspect, and the suspect’s civil rights don’t kick in until some arbitrary “criminal prosecution” line is crossed.
I’m not and have never claimed to know these answers. Until such information is provided, are we simply to trust that when a U.S. official “classifies” someone, it’s for a good reason? That would be very, very trusting of us.
I’m a Canadian citizen. Do I have reason to fear “classification” if ever I visit the United States? By all means, reassure me that your customs officials are not going to detain and deport me to a third country because my name is on a mysterious list somewhere. Here I am, posting to this board under my real (and unusual) name, questioning U.S. procedure. If some customs official is offended by this, is that enough to “classify” me, with possible rendition as a result?
Well, good. At the very least, a review of procedure is warranted.
As far as I know Arar was never arrested. Nor would the government have been required to arrest him. He was alien on US soil who was detained.
The text of 5th read in full:
As best we know about Arar:
― he was not being held for a crime
― he was not even tried once
― he was compelled to a witness against himself
― he was not deprived of life, liberty, or property
― he did not have private property taken
The only only one that might apply would be the deprivation of liberty. But all that happened to Arar was that he was sent back to his country of citizenship.
Arar was deported. This is a civil matter. There was no criminal prosecution. He was a Syrian citizen and was sent back to Syria. This was after the Canadian government claimed (incorrectly) that he had permanently left Canada.
Unknown. If they did bring him back them addition issues could be involved.
That is not what I proposing, but that might be the case in some situations. If the police illegally seize drugs from a person’s car without probable cause, what can that person do except have the evidence suppressed if prosecution tries to use it?
The practical difference between these escapes me, especially when the “detainment” was transferred to Syrian officials and lasted for over a year and, but for official Canadian protests, might still be ongoing.
But being imprisoned and tortured was “due process of law”? I notice how you conveniently skipped over that clause. How do you handle the eighth amendment and its prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments? It’s okay if it doesn’t actually happen on U.S. territory?
That’s certainly not all that happened. He wasn’t set free in Syria. And he had a valid Canadian passport. Isn’t that his country of citizenship? I’ll assume some honest mistakes were made, but how do they justify a year of imprisonment and torture?
If it happened, an honest mistake. Coupled with what appears to be deliberate falsehoods told to Canadian officials by U.S. officials. A thorough investigation is the best tool for determining all of these.
Well, he can pursue criminal and civil charges against the officers if the officers arranged for some goons to take the person out back and beat on him for a while. I’m not certain what it is you’re defending - it doesn’t seem that you even have some esoteric legal principle in mind.
He was only detained. Are you arguing that every person being held before deportation is being imprisoned? The detainment was not tranfered to Syrian officials. When Arar was transferred to Syrian officials the detainment ended and Syrian custody began. What happened to him in Syria is not covered by the Constitution. What the Syrian government does to a Syrian citizen is not a US Constitution issue.
The US never imprisoned or tortured Arar. Or at least there is no accusation that they did. The 8th does not apply. That amendment only applies to post-conviction treatment. We had a thread on that a while back in Great Debates. I do not know what you mean by OK, but when a citizen of a country is in the custody of that country and in the territory of that country whatever the government officials of that country do is not subject to the US Constitution.
He had citizenship in both countries. I do not know why he was treated the way he was in Syria. But it was the Syrian government that did what was done to Arar in Syria. They could have released him. Or sent him to Canada. Or bought him a house. Or killed him. But whatever they did, it is not subject to the US Constitution.
Police officers having someone taken out back and beaten is completely different than what happened here. A better analogy would be if a teenager was caught egging houses and arrested. The police decide to release the teenager to his parents. His parents are divorced. The mother has custody. But because of a mistake in the the records it appears that the father has custody.The father had a reputation for being violent. They release the teenager to the father. The father beats the shit out of the teenager. Was the Constitution violated?
The Syrian government may be evil bastards. But nothing in the Constitution prevents US government officials from sending Syrian citizens back to Syria. Honestly, I cannot even conceive of a possible violation of the Constitution in a situation like Arar’s. A much better case can be made for a violation of statutory law, but we need a lot more evidence before we can conclude that the law was violated.
Syria claims he’s a Syrian citizen. Arar doesn’t. The Canadian government doesn’t, though somewhere along the way there might have been a mix-up. Are you under the impression the U.S. government is not aware of how Syria treats prisoners? For that matter, why was he even in a Syrian prison? He’d committed no crime in Syria. Did the Syrians have any reason to view Ara as a terrorism suspect before the U.S. handed him over, announcing “This man is a terrorism suspect” ? By the argument you present, it’s perfectly acceptable for the U.S to take a prisoner to international waters and torture him or hand him over to a known torturer.
It does? Nothing in the text says that. Fortunately, there’s the 14th and *Brown v Mississippi* to take up the slack. The U.S. government is forbidden to impose cruel or unusual punishments, and to violate due process. It doesn’t magically become legal if they get a third party to do so on their behalf. Why was he turned over to Syrian custody at all? If all the U.S. wanted to do was deport him, just have an officer escort him to a plane bound for Syria, watch him board, watch the plane take off, and that’s that.
Arar doesn’t claim so. If, say, Angola claims you as a citizen, do you have dual citizenship? Are there circumstances where you can be deported to Angola?
Well, the courts can decide that. The argument for fifth, sixth, eighth, and fourteenth violations appears plausible to me on its face, and I’m not some kind of terrorist supporter or anti-Bush fanatic.
Arar is not a teenager. For such a petty crime as in your analogy, an adult would be released on his own recognizance. He did not have the shit beaten out of him by an angry father. He was tortured at length by professional interrogators. Your analogy is pointless. Mine is better - U.S. officials made a point of putting Arar into Syrian custody, knowing full well what would happen to him, to get information they themselves could not extract without constitutional violation. As I see it, this attempt at distancing themselves in no way mitigates that violation. It is, in fact, something that should be actively discouraged, because in the jet age it’s fairly easy to quickly remove someone from U.S. soil, torture them, and return to present the extracted information to a U.S. court.
Honestly, I don’t believe you.
Then after the findings of such an investigation are published, we’ll have more to discuss.
He was born in Syria to Syrian parents under the jurisdiction of Syria. Are you contesting this fact? That means he has jus soli Syrian citizenship. A person cannot renounce Syrian citizenship. If you are born in Syria under the jurisdiction of the Syrian government, you are a Syrian citizen.
Again, Syria’s treatment of Arar cannot result in a violation of the US Constitution.
It does? Nothing in the text says that.
[/quote]
There was extensive discussion of the Cruel and Unusual clause in this thread:
Please present evidence that Syria was acting on the US’s behalf. Again, he was turned over to Syria because he is Syrian.
Angola would have no reason to claim me as a citizen. But if I was born in Angola to Angolan parents under the jurisdiction of the Angolan government and I never properly renounced my Angolan citizenship, then I would be Angolan. I still doubt I could be deported to Angola since I have US citizenship which would raise other legal issues.
Can you cite a single case where a the detainment and deportation of a foreign national to his country of citizenship has been found to violate the Constitution?
Did they require they get information before he was turned over? Syria is not exactly our BBF. Do you have evidence that the Syrian government’s treatment was done under the direction of the US government? If so, please, present it.
But that is not what happened here. The US never tried to bring Arar back to US to stand trial. There is no evidence that the US was required the sharing of any information by the Syrian government before he was tortured. There is no evidence that the US encouraged the torture of Arar. There is no evidence that Syria was acting on behalf of the US.
Then tell me specifically how the Constitution was violated―not vague references to different amendments. Remember that the US did not torture Arar, and that no evidence has been presented that Syria was acting on behalf of the US.