Syria (and less so Iran) shared back-channel intelligence with the US in the months following 9/11. Remember the panicked yer-either-with-us-or-against-us zeitgeist – no Mid-eastern state wanted to be the next Afghanistan. We sweetened the deal by giving them relevant intelligence on their internal dissident groups. In exchange they did our dirty work for us.
That’s why I was surprised to learn that the CIA actually waterboarded anybody. The standard SOP is to ship them over there with a list of questions and let them get to work.
Maybe it’s just a Dennis Kucinich style wet dream, but we may yet see conspiracy to torture charges filed against those Americans responsible for this horror.
Nevertheless, that wasn’t the first time you mentioned national security, so my two-part question remains: what national security interest was served in sending Arar to Syria? Or can national security justify anything at any time?
If you are going to claim that 8 U.S.C. 1231 was violated, the onus is on you present some evidence that there were not “reasonable grounds to believe that the alien is a danger to the security of the United States.” This law may very well have been violated, but we need the evidence.
Then there’s (b)(3)(A): “…the Attorney General may not remove an alien to a country if the Attorney General decides that the alien’s life or freedom would be threatened in that country because of the alien’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” There’s an exception in (b)(3)(B)(iv): “[if the Attorney General decides that] there are reasonable grounds to believe that the alien is a danger to the security of the United States.”
So, were there such grounds, or is the Attorney General just dumb?
The onus depends on what is being claimed. You are claiming the law was violated so the onus in on you to show that it was. I am only claiming there is no reason to conclude that the law was broken because there a lot of issues for which we do not have evidence. If this came to a trial the government may have to present that there were reasonable grounds, or maybe not because of the issues raised by Judge Trager.
Well, more generally, I’m claiming that Arar was sent to Syria and tortured and U.S. officials knew this was going to happen and arranged it anyway. Surely it’s not too much of a stretch to wonder if this was a possibly illegal thing to do.
Interesting development. Now that these guys are going to get their day in a civilian court, the administration needs to scrub the evidence before a non-military judge gets to look at it.
I honestly don’t know whether to weep or piss myself laughing.
If the original returns were good enough to keep them prisoners, indefinitely and without charge, weren’t good enough to get convictions the day after the decision?
If the original returns aren’t good enough now, what does that suggest?
Because now they are going to an new forum. The procedures at this forum will be unprecedented. Nobody knows exactly what form these procedures will take, or what rights the detainee possess.
The Supreme Court has not decided that the detainees get the rights of an accused criminal or criminal trails or any access at all to the criminal justice system. The detainees get a habeas review (a civil procedure) to see if their rights have been violated; however, nobody knows exactly what rights the detainees possess. This is a new ballgame.
