In Todays New York Times Court Dismisses Rendition Suit
By ALAN FEUER
Published: July 1, 2008
A federal appeals court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Syrian-born Canadian man who had accused the United States of violating the law and his civil rights after he was detained at Kennedy Airport and sent to Syria under what he claims was an act of "extraordinary rendition."
Such is the status of the courts and justice in the United States, that Kennedy Airport is the equivalent of Guantanemo, technically speaking.
The man, Maher Arar, tried to win civil damages from United States officials in his suit, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled that because he was never technically inside the United States, his claims could not be heard in the federal courts.
I don't know what precedent was used, perhaps that Tom Hanks movie "The Terminal"?
Mr. Arar was held "several days" in New York, presumably he ate food prepared in New York, used the New York plumbing facilities on more than one occasion. All told, there were probably thousands of dollars expended by various agencies during those "several days", fuel, long distance travel, during negotiations with Syria.
While stating that "threats to the nation’s security do not allow us to jettison principles of ‘simple justice and fair dealing,’ " the majority opinion ruled nonetheless that Mr. Arar, who had been seized as he tried to change planes at Kennedy Airport while flying back to Canada from Switzerland, had no federal standing in his case and that the government did not violate the Torture Victim Protection Act by sending him abroad.
Mr. Arar, a telecommunications engineer, was detained at the airport in September 2002 when immigration officers found his name on a terrorist watch list. After being held for several days in New York, he was sent to Jordan by immigration officers and turned over to Syrian intelligence, which, he claims, tortured him.
But none of that was really happening in the United States, in a strict technical sense.
Oh, and there was ONE dissenting opinion
In an occasionally scathing dissent, one judge, Robert D. Sack, said Mr. Arar’s suit should have been able to proceed because the argument that he was never really in the United States was "a legal fiction."
"Arar was, in effect, abducted while attempting to transit at J.F.K. Airport," Judge Sack wrote.
In a
March 30, 2005 NYT article by Scott Shane it appears New Jersey, somewhere near Washington, and I presume Bangor, Maine would be on shaky terms, re: what country they belong to.
In papers filed in a New York court replying to Mr. Arar's lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers say the case was not one of rendition but of deportation. They say Mr. Arar was deported to Syria based on secret information that he was a member of Al Qaeda, an accusation he denies.
The discovery of the aircraft, in a database compiled from Federal Aviation Agency records, appears to corroborate part of the story Mr. Arar has told many times since his release in 2003. The records show that a Gulfstream III jet, tail number N829MG, followed a flight path matching the route he described. The flight, hopscotching from New Jersey to an airport near Washington to Maine to Rome and beyond, took place on Oct. 8, 2002, the day after Mr. Arar's deportation order was signed.