Source: NY Times
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was the unfortunate person to have one of those "terrorist-sounding" names when he was detained at the Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation.
Mr. Arar, a 35-year-old software engineer whose case has been detailed in a pair of columns by Bob Herbert, was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation.
But no link to any terrorist organization or activity emerged, which is why the Syrians eventually released him.
The very unlucky Arar was illegally held in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper access to legal counsel.
But wait! This story gets better for our weary and confused traveler!
The very lucky Arar was shipped off to a Syrian prison where he was held for ten months in an underground, rat-infested dungeon and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda.
You gotta love America, folks; home of the free.
This practice is illegal here in the good ol' US of A, so the solution is outsourcing torture.
All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable United States practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which the federal government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and lacking fundamental human rights protections.
The maltreatment of Mr. Arar would be reprehensible--and illegal under the United States Constitution and applicable treaties--even had the suspicions of terrorist involvement proven true.
The presiding judge, David Trager of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, wipes his hands free of the case and basically gives the government a free pass in the illegal kidnapping, torture and terrorist involvement accusations of a Canadian citizen.
Talk about having a bad day.
The judge in the case, David Trager of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, did not dispute that United States officials had reason to know that Mr. Arar faced a likelihood of torture in Syria. But he took the rare step of blocking the lawsuit entirely, saying that the use of torture in rendition cases is a foreign policy question not appropriate for court review, and that going forward would mean disclosing state secrets.
It is hard to see why resolving Mr. Arar's case would necessitate the revelation of privileged material. Moreover, as the Supreme Court made clear in a pair of 2004 decisions rebuking the government for its policies of holding foreign terrorism suspects in an indefinite legal limbo in Guantanamo and elsewhere, even during the war on terror, the government's actions are subject to court review and must adhere to the rule of law.
I guess in America, you have some limited rights as long as you don't look Arabic or have one of those Arabian-sounding names.
I end this on a rather fitting quote from Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 US 479 (1928):
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
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