Maher Arar's New Magazine

Maher Arar has launched an online magazine about security practices named PRISM.

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Italy Convicts CIA Agents of Kidnapping and Rendition

Well, at least there's justice for 'extraordinary rendition' victims in one jurisdiction in this world.

In the case of Abu Omar who was snatched from the streets of Milan in 2003 and rendered to Egypt to be tortured (known as the 'Imam rapito affair' in Italy), Human Rights Watch weighs in:

(Milan) - An Italian court's conviction of 23 agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for kidnapping is an historic repudiation of the CIA's crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. The Milan court also found that two Italian officials illegally collaborated in CIA abuses.

The judge said he could not pronounce any verdict against five of the seven Italians on trial for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam because they were protected by the state secrecy doctrine. Of the 26 Americans who were on trial, all of them in absentia, the court found that three were protected by diplomatic immunity guarantees.

Robert Seldon Lady, alleged to be the CIA station chief in Milan at the time of the kidnapping, received an eight-year sentence, the most serious penalty that the court handed down in the case. [See his 'I was only following orders' defense here. -catnip]

"The Milan court sent a powerful message: the CIA can't just abduct people off the streets. It's illegal, unacceptable, and unjustified," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism program director at Human Rights Watch. "Both the Italian and US governments should now be on notice that justice authorities will not ignore crimes committed under the guise of fighting terrorism."

...

The verdicts today also stand in stark contrast to a disappointing decision issued on November 2 by a US federal appellate court in New York, which dismissed the suit brought by Canadian rendition victim Maher Arar. Arar was detained while in transit at John F. Kennedy airport in September 2002, then rendered by the CIA to Jordan and Syria, where he was brutally tortured for nearly a year.

Arar won't find justice in the United States - not when Obama has decided to continue the rendition program while providing legal cover for CIA agents who flagrantly break the law. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... His administration may have walked away from the 'Global War on Terror" moniker of Bushco but it's obviously still very much in play.

And, if you followed the Niger/yellowcake forgery story closely, you'll remember this name:

The Italian defendants included Gen. Nicolò Pollari, the former head of SISMI, Italy's military intelligence service, who was forced to resign over Abu Omar's abduction and rendition, and Pollari's former deputy, Marco Mancini.

in 2005, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported, as translated by The American Prospect, that in the 2002 run up to the Iraq war, Pollari had a suspicious meeting with then deputy National Security adviser Stephen Hadley.

The paper goes on to note the significance of that date, highlighting the appearance of a little-noticed story in Panorama a weekly magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister and Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi, that was published three days after Pollari's meeting with Hadley. The magazine's September 12, 2002, issue claimed that Iraq's intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, had acquired 500 tons of uranium from Nigeria through a Jordanian intermediary. (While this September 2002 Panorama report mentioned Nigeria, the forgeries another Panorama reporter would be proferred less than a month later purportedly concerned Niger.)

The Sismi chief's previously undisclosed meeting with Hadley, who was promoted earlier this year to national security adviser, occurred one month before a murky series of events culminated in the U.S. government obtaining copies of the Niger forgeries.

Thick as thieves (and forgers and kidnappers and torturers and murderers) - the lot of them.

Crocodile tears from one of those found guilty:

EXCLUSIVE: Convicted CIA Spy Says "We Broke the Law"

One of the 23 Americans convicted today by an Italian court says the United States "broke the law" in the CIA kidnapping of a Muslim cleric Abu Omar in Milan in 2003.

"And we are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this," said former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC's World News with Charles Gibson.

DeSousa says the U.S. "abandoned and betrayed" her and the others who were put on trial for the kidnapping. She was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison.

Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), a member of the House Intelligence Committee told ABC News that the trial was a disaster for CIA officers like DeSousa on the frontline.

"I think these people have been put out there. They've been hung out to dry. They're taking the fall potentially for a decision that was made by their superiors in our agencies. It's the wrong place to go."

Just which part of kidnapping is illegal and is punishable under the law didn't DeSousa understand? The Nuremberg defense rears its ugly head once again. And exactly how is she "paying" for anything? She's free, obviously. No one rendered her to Italy to actually stand trial.

And having Hoekstra as your number one defender? What a joke. The minute he calls for prosecutions of Bush administration officials - those "superiors", let me know.

Related:

Scott Horton: Judgment in Milan
 
 

Ignatieff's Big Lie

Stephen Harper hasn’t just failed to stand up for Canada—he’s also failed to stand up for Canadians.

Suaad Mohamud. Omar Khadr. Makhtal. Bahari. Mohamed. Abdelrazik.

Being a Canadian must mean the Canadian government will stand up for you—no matter where, no matter when. This is at the heart of what every Liberal believes: a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.

A Liberal government would stand by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We would stand by our citizens.

And we would bring forward legislation to protect Canadians abroad—to make it illegal for the government to pick and choose which citizens it protects—to make sure these abuses never happen again.

- Ignatieff's speech

Apparently, Ignatieff isn't aware of the Liberal party's history of refusing to fight for Omar Khadr's return while it was in power. Former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham justified it thusly in 2008:

Graham concedes that the Liberal government's response was not unlike that given by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government today – that Canada will not interfere as it accepts U.S. assurances Khadr is being treated and will face justice.

"That was our response as well," Graham said. "I think a year or two years after 9/11 that was a perfectly legitimate response."

He only changed his tune after his Liberal government fell.

And the Liberal party track record on Maher Arar's case was equally as dismal as it enabled the Syrians and Americans to get away with confining and torturing him.

How dare he spout that "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" is "at the heart of what every Liberal believes" when actions prove otherwise?
 

Canadian News Roundup

Busy getting ready to move next week but these stories caught my eye:

- Pigs do fly. Steve is going to investigate his bff Brian Mulroney. He didn't exactly have much of a choice though, did he? (h/t penlan)

- If elected, Dion vows to slash poverty rates. He'd better have a different plan than the last Liberal government or that's just another empty promise. (Have you seen those ridiculously immature ads being run to mock Dion? Did the election campaign start and I missed it or what? If the Conservatives think they have to run ads like that during the off-season, that shows they must be a tad scared of what might happen to them when the next election is really called. They're looking desperate, don't you think?)

- Speaking of ads, I don't know who produced this video clip in response to the immoral Conservatives refusing to seek clemency for Canadians on death row in countries that are democracies (and are they kidding thinking the US is anything resembling a democracy these days with its horrendous human and civil rights abuses and a boy king at the helm who relished his days executing people in Texas?), but kudos to whoever took the time to put the clip together. And speaking of the death penalty, if you missed Bill Moyers' Journal on Friday nite, watch the interview with Thomas Cahill online. It's definitely worth seeing.

- The Center for Constitutional Rights (please visit their site) has launched Maher Arar's appeal but they'll have to get past the "national security" hurdle that resulted in the case being dismissed in a lower court. On another front in this case:

NEW YORK - Gasps broke out in a U.S. federal appeals court Friday as a U.S. government lawyer spoke of Maher Arar's "unequivocal membership of al-Qaida."

One of the court's three sitting judges echoed the reaction of many in the public gallery, declaring the statement stunned him too.

Not only has a Canadian judicial inquiry cleared Arar of having any terrorism links, but U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted the U.S. government did not properly handle his case.

"It was kind of a shocking statement with which to start," Judge Robert Sack told Dennis Barghaan, one of three government attorneys opposing Arar's bid to see his lawsuit against the U.S. government reinstated.

Arar lawyer Maria Lahood hinted outside the courtroom the judge's reaction bodes well for Arar's case.

"To me, it was a sign the judge knew this was an innocent man," she said.

One can only guess what kind of bullshit "evidence" has been manufactured to back up that supposed al Qaeda link.

- New Khadr witness discovered. That could be a major development. In the meantime, our useless federal government is still leaving Omar Khadr to rot in Gitmo. If it had any concern for "Canada's standing in the world" (which it claims to when it defends continuing our presence in Afghanistan), it would actually try to help Khadr get out of legal limbo. In this case though, pigs won't be flying anytime soon.

- Looking for an old movie to rent this weekend? If you haven't seen it (and I'm sure some of you young whippersnappers out there haven't), check out In the Name of the Father. Caution: It will remind you of the Bush regime. Prepare to be infuriated.

If you live in Calgary, I'm looking for 3 (free) things: a wireless router for the new place, a dvd player (I've never owned one besides the one I have in this used laptop I recently got - really) and a flat panel monitor (any size) to replace my gargantuan 21" monitor that's as heavy as a teevee and which I'll either trade or give away. Drop me a line. My e-mail's up there on the left and the bonus, of course, is that you'd get to meet anonymous me in real life (oh how exciting!!). No stalkers please. My life is already interesting enough, thanks. (And yes, I belong to Freecycle™ and have posted wanted ads there and elsewhere).

I also found a local guy who's into recycling/refurbishing computer stuff that he then gives away to those in need. Just gave away my old 486 that I was using as a footstool. Glad someone can use it for its real purpose. I used it for years. (Yes, I'm still stuck in the 90s). If you want his number, let me know.

One last thing, my movers collect and donate things for Afghan/Pakistani refugees settling in the Calgary area. If you have something to donate, e-mail me and I'll forward your e-mail to them. I know someone did e-mail me the last time I mentioned them but I lost the e-mail. Sorry.
 

Video: Maher Arar

Maher Arar speaks about his experience:



Last week, some US legislators apologized to Maher Arar for his kidnapping and rendition. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Hawkish Asshole), who didn't even know that Arar had a family apparently, (that's how much he gives a damn) called it a "mistake" - a "serious error" - while at the same time defending the hardass tactics that the US uses because, after all, there are SCARY TERRORISTS out there everywhere.

You can watch that exchange here:



Rohrabacher should have gotten a big dose of STFU.

On Wednesday, when she went to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Condi Rice was confronted by a Code Pink protester who repeatedly called her a "war criminal" (video) as security "escorted" (ie. manhandled) a couple of other protesters out of the room. Ms War Criminal admitted during the hearing that Arar's case wasn't handled properly. Nice diplomatic words meaning that they fucked up severely but she would not apologize.

"We have told the Canadian government we do not think this was handled particularly well … and we will try to do better in the future," Rice said while testifying before the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee.

Do you get the sense she's talking about a man who was traumatized by torture at the US's behest? No. Neither do I. They'll "try to do better"? What a huge insult. They have no intention of "doing better". They're just sorry they got caught.

The ever gracious Arar was thankful for the committee's attention to his case but this isn't over yet. Arar is still on the US no-fly list and has a court case pending in the US that had previously been rejected on the grounds of "national security" - that handy catch all phrase that provides cover for everything illegal the Bush administration and its cronies have perpetrated.

When comedian George Carlin was interviewed by Keith Olbermann on Tuesday nite, he said of the US, "this country is finished" (video). I agree.
 

Meet the new RCMP boss...

...same as the old RCMP boss:

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The civilian appointed to lead Canada's national police into a new era of accountability revealed Friday he was among the secret group of bureaucrats who had met to censor findings of the Maher Arar report.

“I was certainly involved in the process leading to that decision, but that decision was a decision taken by government,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, wearing a business suit, told reporters after the RCMP's change-of-command ceremony. He was referring to work he had done while serving as an associate deputy minister to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

And Day, being the arrogant, feckless ass that he is, sent his spokespuppet out to say this:

A spokeswoman for Mr. Day, the past and current boss of Mr. Elliott, said “senior officials from various departments” decided to block out the passages before the government signed off on the recommendations.

I guess his momma never asked him the obvious question: "would you jump off a bridge just because the rest of the kids were doing it?" Or maybe she did and his answer was "yes".

Welcome to the new RCMP brought to you by the new government. I'll bet you feel safer already.
 

Video: The Abuse of Secrecy in the Arar Affair

From CBC's The National, Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada and security analyst Wesley Wark discuss the newly uncensored portions of the Arar Inquiry report.



As one who also covers American politics and the battles between congress, the White House and organizations like the ACLU over claims of executive privilege wrapped in the mantra of national security, I have to say that Canada's system appears to place us light years ahead when it comes to demanding and getting transparency in these types of cases (although sometimes these victories can take a very long time to be realized). That type of regime of secrecy cannot and will not be tolerated in this country, as much as Stephen Harper's paranoid Conservative government wishes to make it so.

I recently had the occasion to reread the Reader's Digest 2006 interview with Stephen Harper, Man With a Plan, in which he was asked about the comparisons made between him and Bush. Note his cluelessness:

RD: Are there comparisons that offend you?

Harper: Yes. The Bush comparisons offend me. And not because I have any kind of personal dislike of George W. Bush. I don’t. It’s that the comparisons generally are not thoughtful. Bush has SUVs in his motorcade, and I have SUVs in my motorcade—“Ha ha, he’s just like George Bush.” Well, of course, this is actually the decision of the RCMP, and I’m sure George Bush didn’t pick out the cars in his own motorcade either. That kind of thing bothers me because it’s just a stereotype designed for polemical purposes.

No, Steve, you're compared to Bush because of your love of absolute control and as these new Arar inquiry revelations show us, that hammer you like to bring down on the Canadian people by fighting against things that might embarrass security or other officials implies a twisted sort of reasoning that is well beyond what most Canadians ought to find acceptable.

One would think that, when it comes to ensuring the safety of all Canadians, allowing us to finally see the inner workings of CSIS and the RCMP and how they contributed to an innocent man being tortured would be considered to be an absolute necessity so the same behaviour will never be repeated again. We cannot rely on our security agencies to police themselves, obviously, and as the interviewees point out, the current oversight regime is "fractured".

The Harper government's attempt to cover that up serves no one except those who prefer to remain complicit in such human rights abuses. That was the bottom line in arguing that these documents remain censored. The revelations do not pose a threat to our national security. Not revealing those portions however had the potential to enable CSIS and the RCMP to continue ignoring their own, very serious problems.

In the inquiry report, RCMP officials seemed to be tripping all over themselves to claim that they hadn't worked with the CIA prior to 9/11 - as if that was a good enough excuse to not understand how the CIA operates. And of course we now know that CSIS knew about the CIA's extraordinary rendition (torture flights) practices and still either naively trusted the CIA or just didn't care enough to ensure a Canadian citizen's rights would be protected. The official line seems to be that the CIA just pulled a fast one of Canadian security officials who supposedly had years of experience. How can that possibly be justified and what kind of prime minister would choose to cover that up?

Harper needs to be reminded at every turn that he works for the Canadian people, not his own interests or those of people who have the power to place our lives in jeopardy.

As Alex Neve said, keep the pressure on your MPs and government officials by letting them know that we will not put up with this subversion of our right to know the facts. We will not allow Harper to operate as Bush Lite.
 

Some Censored Portions of the Arar Report Released

Newly released portions of the Arar Inquiry report which had previously been censored - apparently to protect CSIS, the CIA, the FBI and the RCMP - show that Canadian security officials knew that information they relied on that damned Arar to a one year stay via "extraordinary rendition" in a Syrian jail had been obtained through the use of torture and that he most likely would be tortured as well.

The Globe and Mail offers the following summary but you can read the documents here (.pdf file - the previously censored material is highlighted by bold text).

Newly declassified findings of Judge O'Connor's report indicate a host of foreign agencies shoulder the blame for what happened:

• Investigating Mounties had no experience in dealing with the CIA before 2001, but a relationship began to develop after the Sept. 11 attacks that year.

• As anticipated, information from abroad – likely the statements by Mr. El Maati* – found its way into Canadian searches and interviews conducted in January, 2002. "When applying for search warrants, Project A-O Canada relied on information obtained from a country with a poor human rights record." The report adds that "no assessment was made of the reliability of that information."

• In the fall of 2002, the information was still being treated as credible. "In September 2002, the RCMP filed an application for a telephone warrant … [it] referred to [Ahmed Abou El Maati's] confession to the Syrians that he undertook pilot training at the request of his brother and that he accepted a mission to be a suicide bomber by exploding a truck bomb on Parliament hill."

• Even though the RCMP was made aware that the confession was extracted by "extreme coercion," they insisted that it was "still accurate and continues to be true." In this period, RCMP investigators had heard of Mr. El Maati's complaints of torture but dismissed them as "damage control" and asserted the confession corroborated their earlier investigation of him.

• It was the CIA that sent questions to Canada about Mr. Arar when U.S. border guards arrested him in October, 2002. The CIA, which sent him to the Middle East in shackles aboard a leased Gulfstream jet, appears to have been driving the process to send Mr. Arar to Syria.

• Canadian officials were knowledgeable about the U.S. practice of "rendering" suspects to harsh interrogations third-countries. "I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him," one CSIS official wrote in an email on October 10, 2002 – two days after Mr. Arar was quietly sent to that country, and on to Syria, for questioning.

• CSIS visited Syria once Mr. Arar was in custody and came back with the impression that officials there "looked upon the matter as more of a nuisance than anything." He remained jailed there for nearly a year.

(* Truck driver Ahmad Abou El Maati, just two months after 9/11, “confessed” in Syria to plotting a truck bomb attack in Canada at the behest of his brother, who is still considered a fugitive al-Qaeda suspect.

The truck driver has since returned to Canada, uncharged, and recanted his statements as purely the product of torture. He has also expressed regret that he was forced into naming Canadian associates of his, including Maher Arar, including saying that he saw the telecommunications engineer in Afghanistan in the early 1990s.)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Canadian intelligence agencies knew about the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" practices since that program was authorized by Clinton in 1995. But, for the RCMP to expect that a warning it sent out with the supposed intel it had on Arar would cause the CIA not to act without its permission shows how incredibly naive Canadian officials chose to be in this case.

Again, members of Project A-O Canada had little experience or training to
assist them in handling the information-sharing challenges confronting them. This was a new environment for them. For example, they had never dealt with the CIA. As observed by the Assistant Criminal Operations (CROPS) officer, with “A” Division, Inspector Garry Clement, the CIA had a lot more latitude than law enforcement agencies when it came to the war on terror. Project A-O Canada was dealing with American agencies that were more sophisticated in matters of national security and might not always play by the rules Project members would expect.

Considering the CIA's shady reputation and history of illegal, covert activities - including projects like MKULTRA in Canada - one would think the average Canadian intelligence official would know better than to trust the CIA to do everything above board.

To suddenly feign surprise, after providing information on Mr Arar that was false and that was known to have been coerced via the torture of El Maati (a fact which, as the newly revealed portions reveal, was not presented to the judge who handled the telephone warrant in this case) truly rings hollow.

There is definitely enough blame to go around and while Bush repeated again during a press conference today that that the US does not torture, anyone with any knowledge of the CIA's history should have known better than to believe that Mr Arar - or anyone in CIA custody - would be safe.

The judge who ordered the release of these censored passages should be applauded for shedding ever more light on exactly how these ugly covert actions operate because, as much as the Bush administration bloviates about its so-called respect for human rights, the reality is painfully obvious: they'll do anything if they think it will advance the "war on terror", even if that means siding with people and other governments who use torture.

And the Democrats certainly don't get a free pass on this issue either, some of whom helped pass the Military Commissions Act - enabling prosecutorial immunity for CIA torturers - and further eroding legal rights by enabling the passage of the FISA bill last week. The heavy-handedness of the US government is institutional.

This isn't over yet. US officials must be held accountable.

Update: See my related post - Video: The Abuse of Secrecy in the Arar Affair
 

Release of Censored Portion of Arar Inquiry Report Ordered

A judge has ordered the release of some censored material in the Maher Arar inquiry report.

Via the Ottawa Citizen:

Though the censored information represents less than one per cent of the 1,200-page report, Paul Cavalluzzo, the commission's counsel, said yesterday the issue goes to the heart of government accountability.

"Even though we're dealing with national security issues, this was a public inquiry called by the government and our view is that by bringing disclosure to the public, government actors become more accountable and the transparency of the process is an important part of making government actors more accountable.

But:

If either side appeals yesterday's judgment, the attorney general has the new power, under the 2001 Anti-terrorism Act, to issue a certificate prohibiting disclosure of the information, effectively overruling any court judgment ordering disclosure.

"That's the draconian nature of Section 38," said Mr. Cavalluzzo. "We could go right to the Supreme Court of Canada and win and then, when we're carrying away the victorious judgment, they could slap us with a ministerial certificate saying, 'You (still) can't disclose it'."

I don't know how parliament let this language stand in Section 38:

* the requirement to provide notice to the Attorney General of Canada in circumstances where it is foreseeable that the disclosure of information in connection with or in the course of proceedings could be injurious to international relations or national defence or national security;

Just how do they decide what might be "injurious"? What's the standard? Is simple embarrassment of a foreign government enough?

One important point that the Ottawa Citizen's article doesn't disclose is that the Attorney General's decision can be appealed and overturned by a judge, so at least there is some protection from dictatorial powers being in the hands of a government appointee.

At issue are these matters:

"According to Mr. Arar, he has a right to know the facts relating to his detention, deportation and torture. Furthermore, he claims that the redactions within the public report may contain information which is necessary for the public to understand the actions of the RCMP and CSIS in the Arar affair.

"In particular, he believes that at least some of the redactions relate to the candour of certain CSIS operatives, who may have misled their superiors. Mr. Arar also argues that the redactions conceal the fact that briefings to numerous ministers were inadequate and that the RCMP's investigation and adherence to information sharing protocols was deficient.

If the Harper government decides to appeal this latest decision, there will definitely be questions raised about who they might be trying to protect and why. The utter incompetence of the RCMP in this affair surely doesn't end with the resignation of the now disgraced former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli.

Related: Maher Arar's site

The Arar inquiry - Recommendations

British report on U.S. rendition echoes Arar experience

OTTAWA — A scathing new British report about how the United States has exploited British intelligence information to seize three individuals and fly them to secret prisons for terrorism interrogations echoes the troubling case of Canada’s Maher Arar.

An investigation by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee has found the U.S. ignored British security officials’ insistence that no actions were to be taken against the individuals based on information they shared with their American counterparts.

But three men with British connections were still swept up in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s “rendition” program in 2002 and taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other “black” holding centres in Europe. U.S. officials, the report said, knew the British had no intention of arresting them.

Time Magazine Honours Maher Arar

Time Magazine has named its 100 most influential people of 2006 and Canada's Maher Arar is among them in the "Heroes and Pioneers" section.

Vermont Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who has championed Arar's cause writes for Time:

Maher Arar

By Patrick Leahy

Sending a Canadian technology consultant to be confined in a gravelike cell and tortured did nothing to make Americans safer. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, 36, was returning home from a vacation in September 2002 when U.S. federal agents detained him in New York City on suspicion of ties to terrorism. Rather than send him to his home and our close ally, Canada, for interrogation, the U.S. government sent him to Syria, a nation with a history of engaging in torture. A year later he was released. Three years later a Canadian commission found no evidence that Arar had any terrorist connection. The commission also concluded that he was systematically tortured and held under horrendous conditions.

The Bush Administration refuses to acknowledge any responsibility, instead offering the tepid explanation that Syrian officials assured the U.S. that Arar would not be tortured. These are the same Syrian officials with whom our government now says it will not negotiate because they are not trustworthy. Maher Arar's case stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe.

Mr Arar responded saying 'he is "very honored" by the distinction, and thanked his supporters during his "struggle for justice." Although his lawsuit against the US government has been dismissed on the grounds of "national security", his lawyers are mounting an appeal.

Meanwhile, in Canada:

OTTAWA -- One of Canada's most respected judges yesterday formed a united front with Maher Arar aimed at lifting a veil of government secrecy around 1,500 words censored from last fall's report into possible Canadian government complicity in Syrian torture.

Counsel acting for Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor, the author of last fall's more than 800-page report on the Maher Arar affair, yesterday tried to persuade Federal Court Judge Simon Noël to force the government to reveal censored portions of the report. The public is still not allowed to see the blacked-out portion of the report, not even after a $15-million public inquiry that lasted more than three years.

Justice Department lawyers, who argue the government was hardly heavy-handed with its censor's pen, say that it is Ottawa's prerogative to shield portions of inquiry findings for security reasons. Crown lawyer Alain Préfontaine said that fewer than 1,500 words, or less than one half of 1 per cent of the overall Arar Inquiry report, have been censored.

But Paul Cavalluzzo, Judge O'Connor's commission counsel, argued at the Federal Court that "it's not a matter of the quantity of the evidence, it's a matter of the quality of the evidence."

He argued that Canadians need to know the entirety of the judge's report to have faith in government and to keep it accountable.

"The public demands to know what happened, why it happened," Mr. Cavalluzzo argued.

Some of the language surrounding the censored parts of the report appears to indicate that Judge O'Connor might believe that untested intelligence, possibly derived from the torture of a Canadian truck driver then held in the Middle East, may have found its way into RCMP search warrants in early 2002.

(The truck driver, Ahmad El Maati, is a former Afghanistan-based mujahed [holy warrior] who says he was tortured into naming other Canadians, and to being forced to confess to being behind a fake al-Qaeda bomb plot in Ottawa.

Just what, if anything, Canada did with this intelligence has never been made clear; Mr. El-Maati has never been charged with a crime.)

The full text of the search warrants has never been revealed.

There are still many unanswered questions on both sides of the border that, most likely, we'll never know the answers to.

Mr Arar's name surfaced again in parliament this past week during the debates about the allegations of torture launched by several Afghan citizens who had been turned over by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities for imprisonment. Public Safety minister Stockwell Day repeatedly, without any conclusive investigation (many of which are now underway), referred to those claims as being "false". This is the same Day who, in 2002, accused Arar of having possible terrorist ties in parliament. Day was reminded by opposition members that his propensity for jumping to conclusions serves absolutely no one but himself and his party hacks, from the PM on down, who are now using the false equivalency argument that torture allegations are undermining Canadian troops when what's really demeaning to our soldiers is the fact that these conservatives are trying to blow off serious claims by calling all of the individuals involved members of the Taliban (when they don't even know if that's true), seemingly making it okay then to somehow justify their possible torture and diminish their status as human beings with rights.

They did that with Mr Arar too. You'd think that experience would have taught them something.

Mr Arar's inclusion in the "Heroes and Pioneers" section of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People issue ought to be a very sobering reminder to all (and that includes you, George Tenet) that the use of torture is never justified and that every single case involves a person who does not deserve to be proclaimed guilty before being proved innocent. Far too many victims are never heard from. How many have died? How many are still in secret prisons around the world?

Mr Arar is a symbol for all of the wrongfully accused that have been subject to severe abuse as a result of the overwhelming fearmongering and paranoia that so permeates our societies today thanks to an atmosphere of panic and the unwillingness of those in authority to see past the otherness of people who they believe fit their criminal profiles as defined by their skin colour, religion, political affiliations or beliefs.

During the 40s and 50s, it was the "commies". The 60s and 70s brought attacks against hippies and the anti-Vietnam crowd. The 80s - communists again. And now it's anyone deemed to be a possible "terrorist". There are always people who must be viewed as being less than in order to rationalize their treatment as sub-human subversives by those with the power to demean them. Meanwhile, the lives of countless innocent people are destroyed and sacrificed in order to "protect" the many. Funny though, that when asked for real evidence that the ends really did justify the means, that information is "top secret". In other words, the failure rate and the waste of lives is too high to admit.

Mr Arar lived through his horrendous experience. Who's dying, who's being tortured as we speak today? And who's doing something about it?

Related: Maher Arar's site
 

Leahy: DHS and DoJ Are Stonewalling Arar Investigators

Via the Canadian Press:

WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy says U.S. investigators are getting stonewalled in internal reviews of the case of Canadian engineer Maher Arar.

In letters to the independent investigative arms of the Homeland Security and Justice departments, Leahy says he wants to know the status of any probes.

And he notes that a former Homeland official reported delays and obstruction in July 2004 in obtaining documents and interviewing officials about Arar.

Leahy, chair of the Senate judiciary committee and ranking Republican Arlen Specter also want the U.S. Government Accountability Office to conduct an inquiry into whether people like Arar can effectively challenge their presence on terrorist watch lists.

Leahy and Specter have been briefed by Justice officials on Arar this month but have complained they still have a lot more questions.

And who can forget Leahy's smackdown of Gonzales in January?



When Leahy was given that briefing in early February some commenters here and elsewhere thought Leahy had somehow caved to the Justice Department and falsely concluded that Leahy might have been convinced that Gonzales et al had some incriminating evidence about Mr Arar - assertions they were unable to prove, of course.

As I said in a previous post, this is far from being over. Meanwhile, our Conservative government has pulled back from applying pressure on the US government with MacKay simply agreeing to disagree with his US counterparts (ie. Condi) about the fact that Mr Arar is still on the US no-fly list. Mr Arar deserves much more than that from the Canadian government. If it wasn't for Leahy, joined by Republican senator Specter, this case would simply disappear into the ether.

Related: Leahy/Specter press release

On Arar: Agreeing to Disagree is Not Enough

Fact: Maher Arar is still on the US's no-fly list.

Fact: Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay doesn't seem to care.

"We agree to disagree at times," MacKay said. "It's clear Canada and the United States hold a different position on this issue.

Agreeing to disagree is not enough.

MacKay went on to praise the "tremendous unprecedented co-operation" between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico in areas of security.

How nice. Then why are these discussions secret? Canadians deserve to know what's being discussed and decided upon in our names.

Rice reiterated previous comments on the Arar affair, saying the United States respects Canada's decision on Arar, but makes its own security decisions based on "our own information."

So-called 'information' that continues to cast suspicion on Mr Arar even after he was cleared in Canada. MacKay should be demanding a thorough review of this situation. Even Stockwell Day, who said he's seen the so-called evidence the Americans are using against Mr Arar, has stated he saw nothing to indicate keeping Mr Arar on such a list. Instead, MacKay is playing footsies with Condi every chance he gets while selling out who knows what to the Bush administration.

We deserve transparency and Mr Arar deserves more than a wishy-washy foreign affairs minister whose main objective seems to be winning over the Bush administration.