IIRC; Canada offered to deal with Mr. Arar instead of sending him to Syria. I’m not 100% on that, so I’ll try to find a cite if anyone’s going to challenge.
One wonders how Americans and the United States government would react if Canada sent an American citizen, who was connecting through Toronto, to Iran to me tortured.
My guess is the screaming and gnashing of teeth would be deafening. A dozen threads a day would be started on the SDMB about how evil Canada is. We’d be lucky not to be bombed.
SaintCad, read up on the USA government’s development of extraordinarly rendition, and its use of Syria to torture people by proxy.
When come back, bring pie.
In the somewhat unlikely event that someone like SaintCad who can’t even be bothered to read the news article would like to learn the facts of this case, the report of the Arar Commission is a matter of public record. The full text is available here: Equality Today – Peace, justice, and equality The details of the “evidence” (I use the word loosely) against Arar and the events leading up to his rendition to Syria can be found in the section entitled Factual Background Vol 1. The report is not a short document. I’ve just spent a few hours reading parts of it and can provide a brief recap of what the RCMP had on Arar:
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Arar knew one Abdullah Almalki. They were once observed meeting at a cafe, after which they went to a mall, bought some computer equipment, and spoke some more. Almalki’s name appeared on Arar’s apartment lease as an emergency contact.
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There is no 2). There’s just 1).
Almalki was under suspicion of facilitating terrorism (i.e., helping to fund it) due to having worked for a Canadian NGO relief organization in Afghanistan. He too ended up tortured in a Syrian jail, though in his case he was detained during a trip to Syria on business. He has never been charged with anything, and is currently residing in Canada a free man. This information is from Amnesty International; the stuff about Almalki in the Amar Commission’s report is pretty sparse, but it’s clear throughout that there was never enough evidence to lay charges against Almalki, let alone Arar. They didn’t even have enough to get search warrants on Arar.
The key failing of the RCMP prior to the rendition, from what I can tell, is that due to sloppiness in how information was shared with American agencies, it wasn’t clear to the Americans that the RCMP considered Arar to be only a “person of interest” and not an actual suspect. Arar’s connections to Almalki were also overstated in a couple ways.
During Arar’s detention in New York, the behaviour of various US officials was quite deplorable. Both Canadian consular officials and the RCMP unit involved were given the run around, lied to, misled, etc. The Mounties were expecting that Arar was going to be sent to Switzerland (his flight into New York had originated in Zurich). The consular officials thought he was going to be charged with criminal offenses and were under the impression that there were no deportation proceedings underway. Both groups knew that Arar was concerned about being sent to Syria, but assumed that being sent to Syria was just a threat made during interrogation to try to get him to talk, since there was no precedent for anyone in similar circumstances being sent anywhere other than Canada.
Quite frankly, reading the parts of the report about Arar’s detention in New York really pissed me off. The stuff regarding the sloppy investigation and less than careful information sharing isn’t good, but it’s the sort of mistakes that are understandable, and that would have been corrected had the matter ever come before a court of law. There was at that point no discernible malicious intent. I haven’t yet read the later parts concerning the leaks and smears that followed the deportation, so I might yet become angry with the Mounties, but so far they’ve just been inept, not evil. Not so the FBI and INS. With the caveat that they didn’t testify before the commission, and so their side is not represented, it appears that they actively conspired to mislead both the RCMP and the Canadian consular mission regarding Arar’s status, and to prevent Arar’s legal representation from appearing at the hearing which resulted in his removal to Syria.
I hope Leahy can get to the bottom of it. He seems to be about the only person in the US government who’s the least bit interested in doing so.
Syria tortures people? Who knew?
Only the State Department and the Congress of the United States, that’s who knew.
Every year, the State Department prepares reports on all the countries in the world, assessing their track record for human rights, due process, cruel and unusual punishment, etc. State prepares those reports for Congress, as mandated by federal law.
So what did State report to Congress about Syria in the 2001 Report on Syria , issued in the spring of 2002? Let’s take a look:
So, what’s the reasonable inference to draw, when the United States government deports someone to Syria and tells the Syrians that the person is a suspected Islamist terrorist?
feh.
Regarding Saintcad’s point on the “to be tortured” issue. That phrase unquestionably implies that torture was the purpose of sending him to Syria. It is clear that many of the posters here believe that to be the case, but I think Saintcad was merely asking someone to tell him the basis for that belief (other than the generalized perception that the US government likes torturing people).
And, just to make it clear, as I’ve said in the other thread on Mr. Arar, I in no way condone the terrible balls-up by the RCMP that contributed to all this. I’m not at all proud of the way our federal police handled this case, and the horrible effects it’s had on Mr. Arar and his family.
What I am proud of is how my country has responded to it:
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a judicial commission of inquiry appointed by the former Liberal federal government to find out just what went wrong, and how to prevent similar horrible events in the future;
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an outright public apology from the former Commisioner of the RCMP, made at a Commons committee hearing;
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a unanimous resolution of the House of Commons, calling on the federal government to apologize to Mr. Arar;
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the resignation of the Commissioner of the RCMP as part of the fall-out of this matter;
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repeated pressure at the highest level of the current Conservative government to their US counterparts, seeking to have Mr. Arar’s name cleared in the U.S.;
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an outright, public apology from the Prime Minister of Canada to Mr. Arar, made in the lobby of the Parliament Building;
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and a compensation package of over $10 million to Mr. Arar and his family, from the taxpayers of Canada (of whom I’m one - money well spent, in my opinion).
Note as well that the change in government following the election last year doesn’t seem to have affected the handling of this file by the federal government, which is as is should be. Ensuring justice is not a partisan issue.
The US gonernment appears to be jealous of Syria’s propensity to torture. Why else would they send Mr. Arar there instead of his home country?
Had Saintcad done some research, he/she would probably not have brought up that point. The answer is obvious in these two related threads.
Not a big deal, really. We’ve all, imo, been guilty of a lazy jump-in on occasion. Sometimes one gets excited and leaps before looking.
When was that?
Thank you. I am aware that some countries have a history of torture. My point was that many posters were phrasing it in such a way as if we knew Arar in particular stood a better chance of being tortured than the average Syrian. The racist statement was directed to the posters that are tacitly assuming that if you get sent to Syria, you will be tortured.
Sorry for the double post. Hit save too soon and ran out of editing time.
Thank you. I am aware that some countries have a history of torture. My point was that many posters were phrasing it in such a way as if we knew Arar in particular stood a better chance of being tortured than the average Syrian. The racist statement was directed to the posters that are tacitly assuming that if you get sent to Syria, you will be tortured.
As for my first point, I refer to this from the article:
I also love how somehow this has all been turned around to blame the US for the torture instead of the people who actually did it (i.e. the Syrians).
Up until about six years ago.
And yet if you would take even the first steps in informing yourself about this case it would instantly become very clear that the US shipped him to Syria and told the Syrians that he was thought to be a member of Al Qaeda. That pretty much guaranteed he’d be tortured, as indeed he was. They may not have done the torturing themselves, but they are absolutely responsible for it having happened. They could quite easily have turned him over to Canadian authorities instead, who would have continued to investigate him while (gasp! shock! horror!) respecting his basic civil liberties. Instead, possibly because the Mounties informed them that there wasn’t enough evidence to hold or charge him in Canada, they shipped him off to Damascus and practically instructed the Syrians to torture him.
You’re still missing the point, SaintCad. We sent him to Syria. They didn’t grab him.
It’s like if you tossed a chicken in the middle of a pack of coyotes, then begged innocence when the coyotes ate the chucken. And coyotes are supposed to eat checkens, so that’s not a good parallel.
What’s Sean Hannity’s take on this, I wonder. Or Bill O’reilly’s.
SC, I see that you have not bothered to learn about rendition.
Not in many others point of view.
SaintCad and Dolukhanova, I understand the point you’re both raising - I’m always reluctant to jump to the conclusion that a public official is mistreating citizens, without evidence. And, as I said in my earlier post, it is an inference - there is no direct evidence of the intention of the U.S. officials in explaining why they deported Mr. Arar to Syria.
But the information supporting the inference that it was a conscious choice to send Mr. Arar to Syria, knowing that he would be at the least, detained without due process, and quite likely mistreated or tortured, seems strong, in my opinion.
First, Mr. Arar was not trying to enter the U.S. He was on a lay-over while travelling from the Middle East to Canada. The U.S. did not have any reason to hold him in the U.S. What the U.S. officials wanted to do was remove him from the country.
In doing that, they had two choices of where to send him, based on his citizenship: Canada, or Syria. He is Syrian by birth, Canadian by naturalization.
So where should they send him?
To Canada, where he lived? It would be a two hour plane ride, and he would be out of the U.S., and under the watchful eye of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the ones who presumably had the strongest interest in him, since they were the ones who had given the info to the U.S. about Mr. Arar in the first place. Also, Canada and the U.S. have excellent relationships in the area of mutual legal assistance: we have extradition agreements, and both countries have passed federal acts to ensure that police will co-operate with each other on cross-border criminal investigations. So sending him to Canada would match Mr. Arar’s travel plans, and would not prejudice the ability of the U.S. to investigate him, if the U.S. ever found something about him that seemed to affect U.S. security.
As well, Canada has a well-established legal system, that tries to balance the rights of the individual against public interests such as national security, in much the same way as the U.S. So the U.S. officials could be confidant that if they sent him there, he would not be tortured or mistreated, and would have the benefit of legal protections, comparable to that afforded U.S. citizens in the U.S.
Finally, if I recall correctly, Canadian consular officials were making inquiries about Mr. Arar to the U.S. officials, so they knew that Canada was interested in protecting his rights as a citizen.
On the other hand: Syria. A dictatorship, with a horrible track record on human rights, inclusive of torture, as the State Department reports indicate. Also, a country which has spotty relations with the U.S., and no tradition of mutual legal assistance. One of the few points where the U.S. and the Syrian regime are in accord is in their distrust of Islamic movements (Syria is governed by the Ba’ath party, which is secular in outlook).
So given all that, why would U.S. officials choose to send Mr. Arar to Syria, and tell him that he was a suspected Islamic terrorist? Why would they ignore the track record of Syria in this area, as documented by the government of the United States itself, and put Mr. Arar in such jeopardy, rather than just ship him home to Canada?
To my mind, there’s a clear inference that they wanted to send him to Syria, and at the least, did not care if the Syrians treated him with the torture and denial of due process that has marked how they have treated other Islamists in the past - and that is an inference that Senator Leahy, Chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee has drawn as well, if you check out the recent posts in the other thread.
As well, I’m afraid that I’m strongly influenced by the complete silence of the U.S. federal government on this issue. Over the past five years, they have not given any explanation for what happened, even as the evidence mounted that a terrible mistake had been made. Why? if it was simply a screw-up on their part, negligent but not intentional, why not say so? even if it involves confidential material, why not share it with the Judiciary Committee or the Canadian government? That silence supports the inference that they don’t have a defence.
Thank you Northern Piper. You answered my original questions without the “SC, you are a f*#%ing idiot. Of course he was sent Syria to knowingly be tortured. It’s Syria for God’s sake - they torture everybody.” type of answer I’ve been getting for everyone else.
But I do have one more question, what information did the RCMP give the US. The original article implied that this information is what led the US to send him to Syria and not Canada. Was it along the line of “He’s not a Canadian citizen.” or more like “We’re investigating him too, eh.”?
Yeah, 23% is it now?
Peace,
mangeorge
When in doubt torture.