SF Gate: Torture by proxy/How immigration threw a traveler to thewolves

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Perlman <perl () lucent com>
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 20:14:47 
To:Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc:Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: FW: SF Gate: Torture by proxy/How immigration threw a traveler to the
 wolves

Dave:

If people aren't worried about the loss of liberties, this might change
their minds.  Then again, it only happened to a "foreigner..."

Richard

------ Forwarded Message
> From: "Richard" <rdp () yikes com>
> Organization: SF Gate, San Francisco, CA
> Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 20:12 -0800
> To: "Richard" <rdp () yikes com>
> Subject: SF Gate: Torture by proxy/How immigration threw a traveler to the
> wolves
>
>
> Sunday, January 4, 2004 (SF Chronicle)
> Torture by proxy/How immigration threw a traveler to the wolves
> Christopher H. Pyle
>
>
>  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?
>  Christopher Pyle teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount
> Holyoke College. 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle

------ End of Forwarded Message


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