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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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November 2nd,
2009 - Maher Arar’s U.S. Lawsuit Rejected |
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Maher Arar’s U.S. Lawsuit Rejected By Colin Freeze The Globe and Mail November 2, 2009 Maher Arar and other victims
of U.S. “extraordinary rendition” policies have no recourse to sue Washington
for torture suffered overseas unless lawmakers first vote to allow such
suits, an appellate court has ruled. “Our ruling does not
preclude judicial review and oversight in this context,” the Second Circuit
Appeals Court ruled today in a 7-4 verdict against Mr. Arar's long-standing
suit against the Bush Administration. “But if a civil remedy in damages is to
be created for harms suffered in the context of extraordinary rendition, it
must be created by Congress, which alone has the institutional competence to
set parameters.” The practice of
“extraordinary rendition,” which involves U.S. agents secretly facilitating
the arrests of terrorism suspects and routing them to foreign jails in either
legal limbos or police states, was first pioneered by the Clinton
Administration. However, the Bush Administration took a much more aggressive
stand in shipping suspects abroad to face interrogation and likely torture. That includes Mr. Arar, a
Syrian-Canadian jailed in his homeland from 2002 to 2003, but later cleared
of involvement in terrorism by a Canadian judicial inquiry. Led by the Central
Intelligence Agency, extraordinary renditions are shadowy subjects that a
flurry of lawsuits and court complaints have lately shone a light upon. An
Italian court is to deliver a verdict this week in a case involving the
prosecution of 26 CIA agents who allegedly snatched a fundamentalist cleric
off the streets of Milan and sent him to an Egyptian jail. (Washington is
refusing to surrender the agents.) Within the United States,
judges are proving highly deferential to presidential authority and
state-secret privileges. The suit launched by Mr. Arar was seen by civil
libertarians as one of the best hopes of reining in future renditions. (The
Obama Administration is poised to continue the practice.) For years, Mr. Arar, who
resides in Ottawa, was seeking to sue Washington for his being tortured in
Syria following the unusual decision to deport him from the United States as
a presumed al-Qaeda suspect in 2002. A distinct Canadian lawsuit launched by
Mr. Arar had been more successful, leading to a mediation with federal
government officials that awarded his family a near-record $10.5-million in
damages. The New York-based Center
for Constitutional Rights has been backing the Arar case and Monday responsed
to the appellate court ruling. Saying that Mr. Arar “was
not available to comment” directly, the group issued the following statement
on his behalf: “After seven years of pain and hard struggle it was my hope
that the court system would listen to my plea and act as an independent body
from the executive branch. Unfortunately … the court system in the United
States has become more or less a tool that the executive branch can easily
manipulate through unfounded allegations and fear mongering. If anything,
this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law.” The core allegations in both
the Canadian and U.S. lawsuits were essentially the same. Branded an al-Qaeda suspect
in the aftermath of 9/11, Mr. Arar was put under scrutiny by Canadian and
American officials who exchanged information about him prior to his Middle
East ordeal. While in transit from
Tunisia to Canada, he was arrested in JFK Airport in New York and initially
held for two weeks inside the United States. Then, he was hustled onto a U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency jet. Mr. Arar spent most of the
next year in a Syrian prison - the same facility where two other Canadian
Arab suspects had been jailed and interrogated after first surfacing in the
same RCMP investigation. After nearly a year in
custody, Mr. Arar was let go, and fought to clear his name upon returning to Canada. A groundswell of public
opinion led to a Canadian commission of inquiry. Peeling back layers of
federal secrecy, Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor eventually found that Mr. Arar
and the other Canadian suspects were severely tortured in Syria. The inquiry found there was
no substance to the initial RCMP allegation that Mr. Arar was a probable
al-Qaeda terrorist. The inquiry also found that Canadian officials were
unintentionally complicit in overseas torture. Judge O'Connor's remit never
allowed him to explore the actions of U.S. agencies, which took a more direct
hand in events, and whose agents have never apologized for their role in Arar
affair. Mr. Arar's U.S. lawyer,
Maria LaHood, said Monday that no decision has been reached yet on whether to
initiate a Supreme Court appeal. External link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/maher-arars-us-lawsuit-rejected/article1348206/ |