Ever heard of
Maher Arar? A Syrian-born Canadian citizen, he was returning to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia, on Septembre 26, 2002, when his plane made a stop-over in New York. Arar was removed from the plane and detained by US Immigration officials, handed over to the CIA, flown to Syria on a rendition flight, held in solitary confinement and tortured for 1 year until he was returned to Canada by the Syrians in October, 2003.
Arar sued the US, in what was the first real legal challenge to the US policy of Extraordinary Rendition. Today, in New York, Federal judge David Trager, in an 88-page ruling, dismissed the case.
Basically, they're telling people . . . if you're ever wronged by our politicians or intelligence people, you are on your own. Good luck.
The US has always defended it's rendition of Arar by saying it had 'permission' from Canadian law enforcement officials to proceed. Indeed, papers supplied by Canadian authorities were used by the Syrians in their interrogation. However, the Canadian
Public Inquiry found that these papers were turned over to US couterparts as part of ongoing Canada-US law enforcement cooperation, and this was in no way 'permission' for the US to torture Arar by proxy.
Judge Trager's ruling makes much of the need for secrecy, and rather hypocritically says:
One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect of our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case and it were to turn out that certain Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria.
The fact of the matter is that Canada held a public inquiry, and published thousands of pages of otherwise secret documents in what was the most public and transparent attempt by any country in the world to get to the bottom of the US policy of rendition, and potential cooperation from source country officials. Canadian fact finders did find that Arar's claims of torture in Syria are credible. No evidence of collusion on the part of Canadian officials was found. This is how an open democracy investigates a crime. In public.
The US can hardly say the same. I can imagine no more damaging action to Canada-US relations than this judge's casual and cavalier dismissal of Arar's lawsuit. The US clearly considers itself above the rule of law, and this pathetic attempt at shifting the blame onto Canadian officials does not bode well for other victims of rendition seeking redress in the courts.
Today's ruling is perhaps a test of our new Conservative PM Stephen Harper's stance on Canada-US relations. Will Stephen Harper be George W. Bush's bitch? Will he take this lying down? With a ball gag in his mouth, perhaps? I wasn't a big Paul Martin fan, but I already miss him. So far, there has been no official response from the Canadian gov't, but Arar says he is "extremely disappointed" at the "very shocking" ruling, which he vows to appeal. He says:
Basically this ruling is giving the green light to the Bush administration to continue practicing rendition.
Note: Arar is also suing Canada for $400M, alleging that Canadian officials were complicit, based on declarations by Colin Powell and ex-US ambassador Paul Cellucci. The public inquiry's Justice Dennis O'Connor did not discover any evidence of collusion other than the handing over of the RCMP's entire file on Arar to US officials. Canadian officials did quietly visit Arar in Syria and ultimately arranged his release. The Syrians said Arar had no connection with terrorism. Arar's own account of his ordeal can be found here.
Edit to add: .pdf of actual ruling is
here.