January 11, 2004
The Maher Arar Case
Impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney. Impeach them now. We are the United States of America. We do not do things like this.
Christopher Pyle writes about the Maher Arar case:
Torture by proxy / How immigration threw a traveler to the wolves: On Sept. 26, 2002, U.S. immigration officials seized a Syrian-born Canadian at Kennedy International Airport, because his name had come up on an international watch list for possible terrorists. What happened next is chilling.
Maher Arar was about to change planes on his way home to Canada after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia when he was pulled aside for questioning. He was not a terrorist. He had no terrorist connections, but his name was on the list, so he was detained for questioning. Not ordinary, polite questioning, but abusive, insulting, degrading questioning by the immigration service, the FBI and the New York City Police Department.
He asked for a lawyer and was told he could not have one. He asked to call his family, but phone calls were not permitted. Instead, he was clapped into shackles and, for several days, made to "disappear." His family was frantic.
Finally, he was allowed to make a call. His government expected that Arar's right of safe passage under its passport would be respected. But it wasn't. Arar denied any connection to terrorists. He was not accused of any crimes, but U.S. agents wanted him questioned further by someone whose methods might be more persuasive than theirs.
So, they put Arar on a private plane and flew him to Washington, D.C. There, a new team, presumably from the CIA, took over and delivered him, by way of Jordan, to Syrian interrogators. This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth. The fact that he was a Canadian traveling on a Canadian passport, with a wife, two children and job in Canada, and had not lived in Syria for 16 years, was ignored. The Justice Department wanted him to be questioned by Syrian military intelligence, whose interrogation methods our government has repeatedly condemned.
The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.
Why was Arar on our government's watch list? Because "multiple international intelligence agencies" had linked him to terrorist groups. How many agencies? Two. What had they reported? Not much.
The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother's had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar's apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.
That's it. That's all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations. But, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that was more than enough to justify Arar's delivery to Syria's torturers.
Besides, Ashcroft added, the torturers had expressly promised that they would not torture him.
Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it "extraordinary rendition." As one intelligence official explained: "We don't kick the s -- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s -- out of them."
This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained.
It is time someone asked. What our government did to Maher Arar is worse than anything the British did to our Colonial forefathers. It was worse than anything J. Edgar Hoover did to alleged Communists, civil rights workers and anti-war activists during his long program of dirty tricks.
According to the Bush administration, we are at "war" with al Qaeda. If so, then delivering a suspect to torturers is a war crime and should be prosecuted as such. But first, we need to know who was responsible, and that will not be easy -- unless there is a firestorm of protest.
Isn't it time to condemn torture by proxy and demand prosecution of the persons responsible? Isn't it time to question how these watch lists are assembled and used, before more of us fall victim to secret detentions and brutal interrogations based on guilt by computerized associations?
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/003029.html
The Maher Arar Case
Impeach George Bush and Richard Cheney. Impeach them now. We are the United States of America. We do not do things like this.
Christopher Pyle writes about the Maher Arar case:
Torture by proxy / How immigration threw a traveler to the wolves: On Sept. 26, 2002, U.S. immigration officials seized a Syrian-born Canadian at Kennedy International Airport, because his name had come up on an international watch list for possible terrorists. What happened next is chilling.
Maher Arar was about to change planes on his way home to Canada after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia when he was pulled aside for questioning. He was not a terrorist. He had no terrorist connections, but his name was on the list, so he was detained for questioning. Not ordinary, polite questioning, but abusive, insulting, degrading questioning by the immigration service, the FBI and the New York City Police Department.
He asked for a lawyer and was told he could not have one. He asked to call his family, but phone calls were not permitted. Instead, he was clapped into shackles and, for several days, made to "disappear." His family was frantic.
Finally, he was allowed to make a call. His government expected that Arar's right of safe passage under its passport would be respected. But it wasn't. Arar denied any connection to terrorists. He was not accused of any crimes, but U.S. agents wanted him questioned further by someone whose methods might be more persuasive than theirs.
So, they put Arar on a private plane and flew him to Washington, D.C. There, a new team, presumably from the CIA, took over and delivered him, by way of Jordan, to Syrian interrogators. This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth. The fact that he was a Canadian traveling on a Canadian passport, with a wife, two children and job in Canada, and had not lived in Syria for 16 years, was ignored. The Justice Department wanted him to be questioned by Syrian military intelligence, whose interrogation methods our government has repeatedly condemned.
The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.
Why was Arar on our government's watch list? Because "multiple international intelligence agencies" had linked him to terrorist groups. How many agencies? Two. What had they reported? Not much.
The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother's had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar's apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.
That's it. That's all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations. But, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that was more than enough to justify Arar's delivery to Syria's torturers.
Besides, Ashcroft added, the torturers had expressly promised that they would not torture him.
Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it "extraordinary rendition." As one intelligence official explained: "We don't kick the s -- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s -- out of them."
This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained.
It is time someone asked. What our government did to Maher Arar is worse than anything the British did to our Colonial forefathers. It was worse than anything J. Edgar Hoover did to alleged Communists, civil rights workers and anti-war activists during his long program of dirty tricks.
According to the Bush administration, we are at "war" with al Qaeda. If so, then delivering a suspect to torturers is a war crime and should be prosecuted as such. But first, we need to know who was responsible, and that will not be easy -- unless there is a firestorm of protest.
Isn't it time to condemn torture by proxy and demand prosecution of the persons responsible? Isn't it time to question how these watch lists are assembled and used, before more of us fall victim to secret detentions and brutal interrogations based on guilt by computerized associations?
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/003029.html
Judge Orders End to Secret Detentions in New Jersey Jails
Ruling stayed while U.S. Department of Justice appeals
Jim Edwards
New Jersey Law Journal
04-02-2002
Warning that law enforcers have no right to suspend the normal workings of democracy even after attacks such as those of Sept. 11, a New Jersey state court judge ruled March 26 that county jail authorities could not keep secret the names of aliens detained on immigration charges for the federal government.
The ruling, though it was immediately appealed and stayed, was the first clear victory for the American Civil Liberties Union in its efforts to learn the identities of Muslim men detained in secret since Sept. 11, and to open closed-door immigration hearings. The majority of post-Sept. 11 detainees have been kept in New Jersey on immigration violations, housed in Hudson and Passaic county jails under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The ACLU had brought four such suits nationally but until last week the civil rights organization had seen only limited success, obtaining a list of blacked-out names of detainees from the federal district court in Washington, D.C.
On the ninth floor of a Hudson County, N.J., courthouse shrouded in daylong fog and rain, Superior Court Judge Arthur D'Italia said that the public has a right to county jail records under N.J.S.A. 30:8-16 (written in 1898) and N.J.A.C. 10A:31-6.5, both of which detail records that must be made available for public inspection, with few exceptions or qualifications.
"The legislative purpose is to prevent secret arrests," D'Italia said. He noted that no matter how awful the events of Sept. 11, nor how pressing the government's investigation of the attacks, the federal government was still required to obey the law. "Nothing is easier for the government to assert that the disclosure of the arrest of X interferes with the investigation of Y."
During oral arguments, D'Italia made it plain to both sides that he wanted "common sense" to prevail. The motions required him to sift through at least four sets of statutes and regulations, framed between 1989 and 1997, some of which stood in contradiction to each other.
He also chided both sets of lawyers for attempting to mush all the laws together: the ACLU for hoping that a joint reading indicated the records should be released, and federal government lawyers for hoping that the exceptions within those same regulations added up to a denial of the claim. "They're not cumulative. They have to be analyzed separately," D'Italia told the ACLU's Ron Chen, associate dean of Rutgers Law School.
Carol Federighi, senior counsel to the civil division of the federal programs branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, which had joined the suit as a third party, opened by recounting recent history and noting that "the disclosure could jeopardize the counter-terrorism investigation."
The judge interrupted her within seconds. "Stressing the horrors of Sept. 11 doesn't analytically help us very much," he said. "You can go on and on about Sept. 11 and the present state of affairs, but that won't help you."
Federighi also argued that the inmates' names should be kept secret as a privacy right, the object being that if their identities were known they could become targets for persuasion or harassment by al-Qaida. Releasing the names "could create a stigma, a harm," she said.
"So Sept. 11 gives you a right to privacy that committing a sex crime does not?" D'Italia asked.
D'Italia immediately granted a stay pending the Justice Department's appeal of his ruling.
After the hearing, the ACLU's Chen was jubilant. "It indicates a historical antipathy to secret detentions," he said, "We're a democratic society, and secret detentions are odious to that concept."
Federighi declined to comment. Passaic County, N.J., Counsel William Pascrell III said, "The county of Passaic has a contract with the federal government. That contract is binding, and until a court rules otherwise, we're going to comply with that contract."
Ruling stayed while U.S. Department of Justice appeals
Jim Edwards
New Jersey Law Journal
04-02-2002
Warning that law enforcers have no right to suspend the normal workings of democracy even after attacks such as those of Sept. 11, a New Jersey state court judge ruled March 26 that county jail authorities could not keep secret the names of aliens detained on immigration charges for the federal government.
The ruling, though it was immediately appealed and stayed, was the first clear victory for the American Civil Liberties Union in its efforts to learn the identities of Muslim men detained in secret since Sept. 11, and to open closed-door immigration hearings. The majority of post-Sept. 11 detainees have been kept in New Jersey on immigration violations, housed in Hudson and Passaic county jails under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The ACLU had brought four such suits nationally but until last week the civil rights organization had seen only limited success, obtaining a list of blacked-out names of detainees from the federal district court in Washington, D.C.
On the ninth floor of a Hudson County, N.J., courthouse shrouded in daylong fog and rain, Superior Court Judge Arthur D'Italia said that the public has a right to county jail records under N.J.S.A. 30:8-16 (written in 1898) and N.J.A.C. 10A:31-6.5, both of which detail records that must be made available for public inspection, with few exceptions or qualifications.
"The legislative purpose is to prevent secret arrests," D'Italia said. He noted that no matter how awful the events of Sept. 11, nor how pressing the government's investigation of the attacks, the federal government was still required to obey the law. "Nothing is easier for the government to assert that the disclosure of the arrest of X interferes with the investigation of Y."
During oral arguments, D'Italia made it plain to both sides that he wanted "common sense" to prevail. The motions required him to sift through at least four sets of statutes and regulations, framed between 1989 and 1997, some of which stood in contradiction to each other.
He also chided both sets of lawyers for attempting to mush all the laws together: the ACLU for hoping that a joint reading indicated the records should be released, and federal government lawyers for hoping that the exceptions within those same regulations added up to a denial of the claim. "They're not cumulative. They have to be analyzed separately," D'Italia told the ACLU's Ron Chen, associate dean of Rutgers Law School.
Carol Federighi, senior counsel to the civil division of the federal programs branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, which had joined the suit as a third party, opened by recounting recent history and noting that "the disclosure could jeopardize the counter-terrorism investigation."
The judge interrupted her within seconds. "Stressing the horrors of Sept. 11 doesn't analytically help us very much," he said. "You can go on and on about Sept. 11 and the present state of affairs, but that won't help you."
Federighi also argued that the inmates' names should be kept secret as a privacy right, the object being that if their identities were known they could become targets for persuasion or harassment by al-Qaida. Releasing the names "could create a stigma, a harm," she said.
"So Sept. 11 gives you a right to privacy that committing a sex crime does not?" D'Italia asked.
D'Italia immediately granted a stay pending the Justice Department's appeal of his ruling.
After the hearing, the ACLU's Chen was jubilant. "It indicates a historical antipathy to secret detentions," he said, "We're a democratic society, and secret detentions are odious to that concept."
Federighi declined to comment. Passaic County, N.J., Counsel William Pascrell III said, "The county of Passaic has a contract with the federal government. That contract is binding, and until a court rules otherwise, we're going to comply with that contract."
Regarding the Wilson story ... I am beginning to think that there are no journalists left who actually read the reports they report on.
The Senate Intelligence Report Senate Intelligence Report (see specifically pages 36 to 67) demonstrates that what Wilson has lied about, isn't his conclusion that Iraq had not purchased uranium from Niger, but that he had read a CIA report which indicated its skepticism of the Italian documents which allegedly showed that the transaction took place. The INR and the CIA both doubted the authenticity of these documents up to and around the now famous State of the Union address in January 2003. Further, they doubted that Niger would sell uranium to Iraq at all, prior to sending Wilson there.
Wilson claims to have seen the rebuttal of the Italian documents as early as February 2002, when in fact the documents themselves did not surface until October of 2002. They have indeed proven to be forgeries and it appears that Wilson is guilty of patting himself on the back, in the summer of 2003, when he began to tell the media that he knew all along that these documents were forgeries. This is his lie.
It is still true that these documents are forgeries, it is still true that Saddam had not "recently attempted to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa." While there is evidence to suggest that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger in 1999, no such agreement had been signed. Since a new Nigerian prime minister was in place by 2000, there was little reason to suggest that Saddam was actively working with this gov't as the SOU suggested.
Most importantly, however, is that the CIA didn't use Wilson's findings anyway, as they added nothing to what they currently believed. Wilson is guilty of lying to the media, to the public and to those who bothered to buy his book. He is guilty of trying to publicly take credit for what could only have been clairvoyance if he'd been right. But the info he provided the CIA was mostly dismissed.
(That the Italian documents were forgeries was not 100% certain until after the SOU address in 2003. That they were quite likely forgeries and highly suspect was believed all along.)
The main issue at the heart of all of this is, again, did the Bush admin knowingly exaggerate the intelligence it had to purposely scare the public into believing that Saddam was an imminent threat. Since several agencies were red-flagging the uranium/Niger intelligence for months leading up the SOU without including Wilson's info ... well, you tell me.
The Senate Intelligence Report Senate Intelligence Report (see specifically pages 36 to 67) demonstrates that what Wilson has lied about, isn't his conclusion that Iraq had not purchased uranium from Niger, but that he had read a CIA report which indicated its skepticism of the Italian documents which allegedly showed that the transaction took place. The INR and the CIA both doubted the authenticity of these documents up to and around the now famous State of the Union address in January 2003. Further, they doubted that Niger would sell uranium to Iraq at all, prior to sending Wilson there.
Wilson claims to have seen the rebuttal of the Italian documents as early as February 2002, when in fact the documents themselves did not surface until October of 2002. They have indeed proven to be forgeries and it appears that Wilson is guilty of patting himself on the back, in the summer of 2003, when he began to tell the media that he knew all along that these documents were forgeries. This is his lie.
It is still true that these documents are forgeries, it is still true that Saddam had not "recently attempted to acquire significant quantities of uranium from Africa." While there is evidence to suggest that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger in 1999, no such agreement had been signed. Since a new Nigerian prime minister was in place by 2000, there was little reason to suggest that Saddam was actively working with this gov't as the SOU suggested.
Most importantly, however, is that the CIA didn't use Wilson's findings anyway, as they added nothing to what they currently believed. Wilson is guilty of lying to the media, to the public and to those who bothered to buy his book. He is guilty of trying to publicly take credit for what could only have been clairvoyance if he'd been right. But the info he provided the CIA was mostly dismissed.
(That the Italian documents were forgeries was not 100% certain until after the SOU address in 2003. That they were quite likely forgeries and highly suspect was believed all along.)
The main issue at the heart of all of this is, again, did the Bush admin knowingly exaggerate the intelligence it had to purposely scare the public into believing that Saddam was an imminent threat. Since several agencies were red-flagging the uranium/Niger intelligence for months leading up the SOU without including Wilson's info ... well, you tell me.
I guess anyone of Arabic origin will now change their travel plans to avoid a layover in the U.S. or it's territories. Probably a smart move.
As far as the Guantanamo detainees, their culpability should be ascertained in a timely fashion as well as administer the appropriate action whether it be punishment or release but in no way should they be granted the same rights as U.S. citizens or guests.
As far as the Guantanamo detainees, their culpability should be ascertained in a timely fashion as well as administer the appropriate action whether it be punishment or release but in no way should they be granted the same rights as U.S. citizens or guests.
