Canadian disputes U.S. claims against torture

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Wed, Jul. 28, 2004




Maher Arar was arrested and deported to Syria while transiting through New York in 2002. Arar claims he was tortured while in Syria and the Canadian government has launched an inquiry into the events surrounding his arrest. PATRICK DOYLE/KRT


Canadian disputes U.S. claims against torture

By SHANNON MCCAFFREY

Knight Ridder Newspapers


OTTAWA - When memos surfaced recently showing top Justice Department lawyers trying to justify torture, Attorney General John Ashcroft moved quickly to stake out the moral high ground. "This administration rejects torture," Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I condemn torture."
(snip)

For 10 months and 10 days, Arar was in a Syrian prison, beaten and confined to a cell not much bigger than a coffin. He thanks the United States for his time in hell.Arar was picked up by U.S. authorities at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, accused of being a terrorist and then shipped on Justice Department orders to Syria under a highly secret policy known as rendition. Arar's story reveals much about the Bush administration's hidden war on terror.
(snip)

In the wake of the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the firestorm over government memos that provide a road map around international treaties banning torture, scrutiny of the government's war on terrorism has increased.He was the victim of rendition, in which the United States sidesteps formal extradition and quietly ships detainees to other countries to be interrogated or tried. U.S. agents also have snatched terror suspects from other countries and taken them to unknown facilities for interrogation or for trial.

The number of people swept up by the government is unknown. But at a hearing before the Sept. 11 commission, then-CIA Director George Tenet said 70 terror suspects were subject to rendition during an undisclosed period before the attacks. Counterterrorism experts believe the use of rendition has increased since. Some detainees are believed to end up in the prisons of countries with documented histories of torture, such as Egypt, Morocco and Jordan. Little is known about rendition because most of the detainees are never heard from again.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/9264344.htm?ERIGHTS=-2408008629194927656miami:&KRD_RM=3mkmlmmlnkjppmjjjjjjjjjsko|
(Free registration required)

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You've no doubt read about this man already quite a few times. In case you haven't taken the time to register ( ~for nada~ ) at the Miami Herald, the article says he was grabbed in New York after stopping there back to Canada from visiting his wife's relatives in Tunisia.

He was placed on a private jet, escorted by several U.S. agents, and sent away. HE said he watched the course of the jet on the flight monitor. He was blindfolded and taken to another airplane, at some point, and when he could see again, he looked up and saw photos of current and past Presidents of Syria. (Gulp.) It was all down hill after that.

[thebigidea]

1. I was hoping to hear more about this horrible story

A few things confuse me, though.

Syria?

Why Syria? Wasn't it in the AXIS OF EVIL? Why are we sending people there to be tortured?

And why would Assad help the US if he was on their hit list?

Also:

"He was blindfolded and taken to another airplane, at some point, and when he could see again, he looked up and saw photos of current and past Presidents of Syria. (Gulp.) It was all down hill after that."

Isn't this an acknowledged tactic in those secret "Copper Green" prisons, pretending its in a foreign country to frighten prisoners?

[Donkeyboy75]

2. Need to brush up on your RW rhetoric.

The axis of evil was Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But if they're lucky, Syria will get promoted into Iraq's place!! :bounce:

[thebigidea]

3. You need to brush up on your Neocons...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1988810.stm

Who's who in the 'axis of evil'

The original "axis of evil" list, pronounced by US President George W Bush in 2002, comprised Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

US Undersecretary of State John Bolton has said that Syria, Libya and Cuba are also candidates.

So what is the US case against these countries and what are its options now?

Syria
The US State Department accuses Syria of supporting terrorism and harbouring Palestinian groups it classes as terrorists.

--

I guess Libya is now part of the Axis of Bullshit We Bring Up To Pretend Bush Scares Countries Straight.



Moral: Never trust a man with brown hair and a white moustache.

[Donkeyboy75]

4. Yes yes yes

But when you said "Why Syria? Wasn't it in the AXIS OF EVIL?", I thought you were referring to the landmark :eyes: state of the union address.

Hell, let's just agree that all countries with brown people in them are evil...unless of course we have a business relationship with their leaders.

[thebigidea]

5. Or we could agree that David Frum is a fuckin' jackass.

"Axis of Evil"? God, what bullshit.

Has Bush used that asanine phrase since?

[Donkeyboy75]

6. Won't find too much argument on this board about Frum, methinks.

My <then> apolitical wife even groaned during his SOTU when he said that. That's when the worm started to turn for her. Not sure if he's used it since then or not, but Jesus, what a dumbfuck.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Maybe the Jeckyl juice he chugs has bleached it out.

This guy is a sick bastard:

Sitting with Bolton in a media room at Foggy Bottom, Pilger asked Bolton about civilian casualties in Iraq. Bolton replied, "I think Americans like most people are mostly concerned about their own country. I don't know how many Iraqi civilians were killed. But I can assure you that the number is the absolute minimum that is possible in modern warfare....One of the stunning things about the quick coalition victory was...how low Iraqi casualties were."

This was not a surprising response, nor was it the revelatory moment I teased above. Bolton is a hawk's hawk in the Bush administration. He is the agent conservateur in Colin Powell's State Department. He has led the administration's effort against the International Criminal Court. Last year, he single-handedly tried to revise U.S. nuclear policy by asserting that Washington no longer felt bound to state that it would not use nuclear weapons against nations that do not possess nuclear weapons. (A State Department spokesman quickly claimed that Bolton had not said what he had indeed said.) Bolton also claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons--a charge that was not substantiated by any evidence and that was challenged by experts. In July, he was about to allege in congressional testimony that Syria posed a weapons-of-mass-destruction threat before the CIA and other agencies, who considered his threat assessment to be exaggerated, objected to his statement. When England, France and Germany recently tried to develop a carrot-and-stick approach in negotiating an end to Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, Bolton huffed, "I don't do carrots."

His remarks to Pilger, then, were hardly surprising. He is a no-apologies ideologue. Pilger asked if 10,000 civilian casualties in Iraq would be a "quite high" amount. Bolton answered, "I think it is quite low if you look at the size of the military operation that was undertaken."
(snip/...)

http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1076

[thebigidea]

11. Looking closer, its an obvious rug. Geez, you'd think he'd pick gray.

Too bad he can't find something to cover the loss of his sanity.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Holy smokes! The brown thing is parted on his left side

The jet black one, a lá Reagan's hair dye, is pasted on so the part is on the right side. It looks close to falling off altogether.

[Judi Lynn]

8. I checked the article again.Here's how he knew he was in Syria:

He was taken first to Jordan, then blindfolded and taken aboard another plane. When the blindfold was removed he saw pictures of Syria's past and current presidents gazing down at him from a prison wall and knew with a sick certainty where he was. Arar says the beatings lasted about two weeks. He was slapped and punched and beaten with electrical cords. Worse than the physical violence, though, were the shrieks of pain from others in the prison being tortured. That let him know what was coming.

"The screams of people who were being tortured in Syria are still with me every day, so my duty as a human being is to keep talking about it," he said.

Arar said he soon noticed that his Syrian captors asked him many of the same questions the Americans had. He was hit when he answered too slowly, hit when he answered in a way his interrogators didn't like, and sometimes he was hit before a question had even been asked. After being beaten with electrical cables on his hands and feet, Arar says he told his Syrian captors what they wanted to hear: that he had been to training camps in Afghanistan.

"I've never even been to Afghanistan," he says now.
(snip/...)

I forgot the part about going to Jordan first. The article says that Jordan is also a country which assists the _Bush administration by torturing detainees unlucky enough to be sent there. They must have refused to get involved with this. Hey, they've got their standards!

[thebigidea]

9. Digging further, Syria did admit they had him.

I just immedeately thought of those articles about interrogators pretending to be in Muslim countries with a cheerful reputation for torture in order to break the detainees faster...

Sickening:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031121.arar21/BNStory/Front/

U.S. trusted Syria's assurances on Arar: Ashcroft

Ottawa — U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft says the Bush administration received — and believed — assurances from Syria that it would not torture Maher Arar before deporting the Ottawa man to that Middle Eastern country.

His statement Thursday was met with derision by human-rights groups because it appears to be at odds with official U.S. government reports that say torture is a routine interrogation tool in Syria.

As recently as two weeks ago, U.S. President George W. Bush denounced the Syrian regime for leaving its people “a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.”

--

How typically Bush to simultaneously threaten war on Syria AND ship prisoners there to be tortured.

[Judi Lynn]

13. I can't believe a couple of "Christians" like W. and Ashcroft

would think they should tell horrendous lies like this and expect Gawd not to zap them. From the Globe and Mail article:

The U.S. State Department, in its most recent report on human-rights abuses in Syria, said torture is common and the methods include beatings, electric shocks, pulling out fingernails, forcing objects into the rectum, and bending prisoners into the frame of a wheel while whipping exposed body parts.

It is illegal for the U.S. government to deport any individual to a country where it can expect the person will be tortured, said Joe Stork, a Middle East expert with Human Rights Watch.

The use of torture is “well documented in the case of Syria and it is pretty shameful” for the U.S. to have deported Mr. Arar to that country, Mr. Stork said.

“It is preposterous that U.S. authorities would even consider asking the Syrian government –- a government that Washington itself has identified as having an abysmal human rights record –- to give that kind of assurance” that Mr. Arar would not be tortured, Alex Neve, the secretary-general of the Canadian branch of Amnesty International, said.
(snip/...)

"And if we're lying about Syria, may we be struck by lightning from heaven."

[Stockholm]

12. Why, because torture there is cheap cheap - This case is identical

to the Swedish case reported on DU the other day!

This rendition policy is bullshit. It is simply a way to have arabic looking people with "terranames" tortured. Videos and audiotapes are then sent to the CIA.

[Judi Lynn]

15. It would be a gift to humanity if someone found a way to slip

one of the videos into the public domain.

What we really need is a formal end to torture, done so publically any future people in positions of power would not DARE cross the line ever again.

That's probably why they are guarding the remaining Abu Ghraib tapes and photos with their very lives. They know they are screwed if we see the really bad stuff.

This would be the right time for people of conscience to step forward and give the life-affirming side of our nation a hand, by outing these people and their crimes, so we can clean it all up.

[thebigidea]

16. If Hersh has seen them, they'll come out.

Part of me wonders if he's holding back until the release of his book about it, "Chain of Command" ... we don't have time for that!

Then again, what the hell do I know? Hersh has been impeccable on this awful case.

And if the book is scheduled to come out this fall, that sounds like veeeery good timing.

[Judi Lynn]

17. Didn't know he's doing a book.That's got to help.Soon is important.n/t

[thebigidea]

18. from HarperCollins:

Chain of Command
The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
by Seymour Hersh


Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his stories in The New Yorker magazine, including his breakthrough pieces on the Abu Gharaib prison scandal. Now, in Chain of Command, he brings together this reporting, along with new revelations, to answer the critical question of the last three years: how did America get from the clear morning when hijacked airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq?

Hersh established himself at the forefront of investigative journalism thirty-five years ago when he broke the news of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. Ever since, he's challenged America's power elite by publishing the stories that others can't or won't tell.

In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of President Bush's "war on terror" and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an Administration blinded by ideology and of a President whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.

Release date: September 21

[Judi Lynn]

19. People of his skill and courage are almost countable on one hand.

Damned few of them, and they take on the threat of powerful nasty people to get their work done.

I'll bet he still has enemies from the My Lie investigation who think of him daily.

He's going to make far more friends, supporters, admirers, if this book gets out than he'll ever know: all over the world.

[Fleshdancer]

7. I can't believe we're paying for this

Our tax dollars fund the practice of secretly flying people to unknown places in order to torture them. I can't believe how fast we got to this point.

How does this not create more terrorists? Is that ultimately the point? To create the terrorism necessary to keep this country paralyzed in fear?

[struggle4progress]

20. kick for fascists and necrophiliacs in government

:kick: