The Massacre Continues in Iraq 84/
Civil Rights Lost: Another Example
02-27-06
Domestic rendition or (TORTURE INC.)
SEE: 1 CRYPTOME 2 BUSH CRIMES
1
A Judicial Green Light for Torture
Published: February 26, 2006
The administration's tendency to dodge accountability for lawless actions
by resorting to secrecy and claims of national security is on sharp
display in the case of a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who spent
months under torture because of United States action. A federal trial
judge in Brooklyn has refused to stand up to the executive branch, in a
decision that is both chilling and ripe for prompt overturning.
Mr. Arar, a 35-year-old software engineer whose case has been detailed in
a pair of columns by Bob Herbert, was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002
while on his way home from a family vacation. He was held in solitary
confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper
access to legal counsel. Finally, he was shipped off to a Syrian prison.
There, he was held for 10 months in an underground rat-infested dungeon
and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of
Al Qaeda. All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable United
States practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which the federal
government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and
lacking fundamental human rights protections.
The maltreatment of Mr. Arar would be reprehensible — and illegal under
the United States Constitution and applicable treaties — even had the
suspicions of terrorist involvement proven true. But no link to any
terrorist organization or activity emerged, which is why the Syrians
eventually released him. Mr. Arar then sued for damages.
The judge in the case, David Trager of Federal District Court in Brooklyn,
did not dispute that United States officials had reason to know that Mr.
Arar faced a likelihood of torture in Syria. But he took the rare step of
blocking the lawsuit entirely, saying that the use of torture in rendition
cases is a foreign policy question not appropriate for court review, and
that going forward would mean disclosing state secrets.
It is hard to see why resolving Mr. Arar's case would necessitate the
revelation of privileged material. Moreover, as the Supreme Court made
clear in a pair of 2004 decisions rebuking the government for its policies
of holding foreign terrorism suspects in an indefinite legal limbo in
Guantánamo and elsewhere, even during the war on terror, the government's
actions are subject to court review and must adhere to the rule of law.
With the Bush administration claiming imperial powers to detain, spy on
and even torture people, and the Republican Congress stuck largely in
enabling mode, the role of judges in checking executive branch excesses
becomes all the more crucial. If the courts collapse when confronted with
spurious government claims about the needs of national security, so will
basic American liberties.