Torture and terror Options

[pebkac]

http://the-osterley-times.blogspot.com/200...ts-role-in.html

As George Bush continues to argue that Article 3 of Geneva Conventions needs to be amended in order to allow CIA operatives to engage in "alternative" interrogation techniques, a case has come to light in Canada which perfectly highlights the excesses of Bush's War on Terror and the plight of innocents caught up in it.

Indeed, I notice that in his wish to subject people to these novel interrogation techniques President Bush and his cronies seem to have removed the presumption of innocence from suspects. I mean, I'm presuming you certainly wouldn't torture anyone that you thought might be innocent, so we can only deduce that, in Bush's new America, guilt is simply presumed and torture is deemed the only way to get the guilty to talk.

A Canadian government commission report into the case of a Canadian computer engineer has exonerated the engineer of any ties to terrorism and lambasted the US security services for transferring the man to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured.

    “I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,” Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.

    “The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. “They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less than forthcoming manner.”

    The Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan in an American government plane and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable. He was freed in October 2003, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no connection to terrorism and returned him to Canada.

This entire sorry case took place because Mr Arar met with Abdullah Almalki, a man already under surveillance by a newly formed Mounted Police intelligence unit known as Project A-O Canada. It now transpires that the two men discussed where to buy low cost ink jet printer cartridges. After this fateful conversation the Canadian Mounted Police requested that Mr Arar be included in a database that alerts United States border officers to suspect individuals.

When Mr Arar returned from holiday, the FBI told the Canadians that they intended to interview him and return him to Switzerland. The Canadians supplied the FBI with a list of questions they would like Mr. Arar to answer, all of them based on erroneous information.

    The Canadian police “had no idea of what would eventually transpire,’’ the commission said. “It did not occur to them that the American authorities were contemplating sending Mr. Arar to Syria.”

    While the F.B.I. and the Mounted Police kept up their communications about Mr. Arar, Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs was not told about his detention for almost three days. Its officials, acting on calls from worried relatives, had been trying to find him. Similarly, American officials denied Mr. Arar’s requests to speak with the Canadian Consulate in New York, a violation of international agreements.

    Evidence presented to the commission, said Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, its lead counsel, showed that the F.B.I. continued to keep its Canadian counterparts in the dark even while an American jet was carrying Mr. Arar to Jordan. The panel found that American officials “believed — quite correctly — that, if informed, the Canadians would have serious concerns about the plan to remove Mr. Arar to Syria.”

    Mr. Arar arrived in Syria on Oct. 9, 2002, and was imprisoned there until Oct. 5, 2003. It took Canadian officials, however, until Oct. 21 to locate him in Syria. The commission concludes that Syrian officials at first denied knowing Mr. Arar’s whereabouts to hide the fact that he was being tortured. It says that, among other things, he was beaten with a shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented.

    American officials have not discussed the case publicly. But in an interview last year, a former official said on condition of anonymity that the decision to send Mr. Arar to Syria had been based chiefly on the desire to get more information about him and the threat he might pose. The official said Canada did not intend to hold him if he returned home.

What I find most staggering about this case is the almost routine way in which Mr Arar was dispatched to Syria. This was not a man who was known to police and the FBI, Arar was not a known terrorist suspect who's name and activities had long been under surveillance by the authorities. This was man who's name had come up during an investigation, indeed, this was someone on whom the authorities had almost no information.

And yet still the FBI made the decision to send this man to Syria "to get more information on him and the threat he might pose".

This is staggering stuff. Arar was tortured to find out if he posed a threat.

When one looks at cases like this one it becomes impossible to believe that torture is not a routine part of Bush's War on Terror. The main argument Bush is having with his fellow Republicans is over whether he has to continue sending people like Mr Arar abroad to be tortured or whether the FBI can now carry out this kind of treatment at home.

In the light of cases like this one, Bush's claims that the US don't do torture have never sounded more hollow.

The question now, is what kind of country America truly is. The answer will come with it's reaction to Bush's demands.

Now, why is it that we need to arrange trials for people held as terror suspects again?

[Dogmeat]

cliff notes?

[pebkac]

A Canadian computer programmer got sent to a CIA facility in Syria to be tortured so they could find out if he was a terrorist or not.

[Billy]

A Canadian computer programmer got sent to a CIA facility in Syria to be tortured so they could find out if he was a terrorist or not.

What kind of torture? Before I make the claim that what they are doing is wrong, I want to know exactly what is being called torture.

Keeping someone in a jail cell could be considered torture, that doesn't mean I agree with letting all the criminals of the world free.

(btw, I did not read this article, so quote away and make me look like a dumbass so I learn my lesson)

[pebkac]

What kind of torture? Before I make the claim that what they are doing is wrong, I want to know exactly what is being called torture.

Does it really matter? The government sent him to another country and held him there against his will without even knowing whether he was a terrorist or not.

    “I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,” Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at a news conference.

And it turns out he wasn't.

[Hartmann]

Sending them to Syria could be considered torture...

Sending them to Syria in and of itself is assinine. We don't have the greatest relations with them, especially one that would let us send fellow Muslims there to get tortured. People don't think before they write.

[pebkac]

What kind of torture? Before I make the claim that what they are doing is wrong, I want to know exactly what is being called torture.

Keeping someone in a jail cell could be considered torture, that doesn't mean I agree with letting all the criminals of the world free.

(btw, I did not read this article, so quote away and make me look like a dumbass so I learn my lesson)

FYI though...

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14897315/?GT1=8506

[Testm0nkey]

read this on another board. pretty fucking crazy. are the canadians going to do anything (doubt it)?

[pebkac]

read this on another board. pretty fucking crazy. are the canadians going to do anything (doubt it)?

Considering that it was their fuckup too, probably not. I bet this guy could sue the hell out of the Canadian and US governments though.

[woody]

in a coffin size dungeon?

what's that about 6 feet long by 2 feet wide

[Hartmann]

Again, sending them to Syria does not make any sense... torturing Muslims in a country that already does not like us??

[Divergent Realit...]

in a coffin size dungeon?

what's that about 6 feet long by 2 feet wide

2DIMENSIONAL DUNGEON

id imagine like you said, a 6'x2'x2'

if the jail was mean then the cage would be a 3"-6" too short for him.

[impala454]

i love these melodramatic stories people come up with. it's interesting to me how much the facts can get twisted.

now i'm not saying wikipedia should be taken as bold face truth, but their info on the man seems to be more factual rather than melodramatic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar

First off, the man was born in and is still a citizen of Syria, so I'm not sure why you guys think it's so terrible that he get sent there. The U.S. did not just pick him up and send him to Syria, he was deported there on order of existing U.S. policy. The guy "abdullah almalki" who the melodrama article says arar simply "had a conversation about ink cartridges" with, is also syrian born and is suspected to have links to al-qaeda. and for such a one time casual conversation (which the article claims), the guy actually co-signed arar's apartment lease.

also, apparently arar fled syria to avoid mandatory participation in the syrian army. so after we deport him back to syria, he ends up in a syrian prison. now call me dumb, but if I'd skipped town to avoid mandatory army service, then I get caught later and disciplined (in regular syrian fashion i'm sure) what am I going to claim once canada bails me out a year later? am I going to tell them I was tortured because it's the deserved syrian punishment for bailing on my home country where military service is required, or am I going to make some shit up that puts me in a position of sympathy and possible huge settlements/lawsuits?

[pebkac]

First off, the man was born in and is still a citizen of Syria, so I'm not sure why you guys think it's so terrible that he get sent there.  The U.S. did not just pick him up and send him to Syria, he was deported there on order of existing U.S. policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/am...age&oref=slogin

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.

Hell, according to your own wikipedia article...

On September 26, 2002, during a stopover in New York en route from Tunis to Montreal, Arar was detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service who were acting upon false and misleading information supplied by the RCMP[1]. Despite carrying a Canadian passport, he was deported to Syria in accordance with a controversial U.S. policy known as "extraordinary rendition". Arar was then held in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison and regularly tortured until his eventual release and return to Canada in October 2003.

  The guy "abdullah almalki" who the melodrama article says arar simply "had a conversation about ink cartridges" with, is also syrian born and is suspected to have links to al-qaeda.  and for such a one time casual conversation (which the article claims), the guy actually co-signed arar's apartment lease.

So? That's still not enough evidence to prove that Arar was involved in a terror plot.

EDIT: And according to the New York Times, he WASN'T a co-signer. He was listed as an emergency contact.

After finding Mr. Almalki listed as an emergency contact, they stepped up their investigation of Mr. Arar.

also, apparently arar fled syria to avoid mandatory participation in the syrian army.  so after we deport him back to syria, he ends up in a syrian prison.  now call me dumb, but if I'd skipped town to avoid mandatory army service, then I get caught later and disciplined (in regular syrian fashion i'm sure) what am I going to claim once canada bails me out a year later?  am I going to tell them I was tortured because it's the deserved syrian punishment for bailing on my home country where military service is required, or am I going to make some shit up that puts me in a position of sympathy and possible huge settlements/lawsuits?

Does it matter? Even if what you're saying is true, he was still sent there against his will based on inaccurate information.

[impala454]

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria

ok... so what is this so-called inaccurate information? and what did the american officials do to mislead canadian authorities about their "plans" for the guy?

it looks to me like the guy simply was shady enough to get deported, and it looks like he was deported completely legally. what happens to someone who gets deported when they arrive in their home country has nothing to do with us.