Former detainees launch legal gambit to pry open torture inquiry
Andrew Duffy, CanWest News Service via Ottawa Citizen | October 18, 2007
OTTAWA -- A federal inquiry into the overseas detention and alleged torture of three Arab-Canadian men has collected more than 26,000 documents -- none of which have been made public.
A new legal application to make more of the inquiry's work public reveals that it now holds considerably more documents than the Arar commission.
But unlike the Arar commission, which reviewed 21,500 documents for national security concerns and then released heavily censored versions, the inquiry headed by retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci has not made public a single page.
"It is obviously troubling," said Jasminka Kalajdzic, lawyer for Ottawa engineer Abdullah Almalki. "Our interpretation of the rules of the inquiry speak to a need for ensuring information that is essential to national security be kept private, but it cannot be that 26,000 documents are all subject to a national security claim."
The Iacobucci inquiry is examining the role of Canadian police, spies and diplomats in the detention, interrogation and alleged mistreatment of Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.
The men allege that, much like Maher Arar, they were tortured in Syria for answers to questions that could only have originated from Canadian security agencies.
In Almalki's case it has already been established by the Arar commission that the RCMP passed questions for him to Syrian Military Intelligence through Canadian diplomats. Last week, the men appealed to the prime minister to open the inquiry to public scrutiny, but Stephen Harper said Iacobucci already has a mandate broad enough to do that.
Lawyers for the men and other intervenors have now launched a legal gambit to pry open the inquiry.
They have have filed an application that seeks the names of all witnesses interviewed, the production of thousands of documents and an order for public hearings on issues that do not involve national security.
Specifically, the men want public hearings on the conduct of embassy officials; the government's policy on torture; its information sharing practices with other countries; and any requests by Canadian officials for information from the three men while in detention overseas.
In a joint legal submission, lawyers for the three men argue the commission has reached a "critical juncture."
"The fact-finding work of the commission appears to be nearing its conclusion," the lawyers write, "and the applicants have yet to meaningfully participate in or contribute to the work of this commission."
The secrecy that surrounds the commission, they contend, threatens to destroy public confidence in its work: "Secrecy fosters a belief that there is a cover-up."
Commission counsel John Laskin, however, said the application seeks disclosure levels that exceed those of the Arar inquiry. The names of all witnesses who testified in-camera were never released in that inquiry, he said, nor were all documents disclosed.
The Iacobucci inquiry has so far interviewed about 40 witnesses in-camera.
Laskin said Wednesday no documents have been released because the commissioner is determined to avoid the time-consuming process of reviewing them for national security concerns. A "large proportion" of the documents, he said, fall into that category.
Iacobucci was appointed by the federal government to lead an "internal inquiry" into the three cases in response to a recommendation by the Arar commission. He ruled in late May that the inquiry will be held largely in secret in keeping with his mandate.
Legal documents filed with the Iacobucci inquiry also show concerns have been raised about the thoroughness of the commission's fact-finding. The inquiry initially did not include former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and Insp. Michel Cabana on its interview list. Cabana was the leader of Project A-O Canada, an RCMP special investigative unit created one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Almalki was the principal subject of the A-O Canada investigation.
Laskin said on Wednesday that both Zaccardelli and Cabana will be interviewed - in part, because of the concerns expressed in off-the-record discussions and correspondence.
Showing posts with label Maher Arar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maher Arar. Show all posts
Canada dot com : Former detainees launch legal gambit to pry open torture inquiry
Friday, October 19, 2007
Filed under
lawyers,
Maher Arar,
torture
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, October 19, 2007
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Toronto Star : Maher Arar's wife calls for honest debate
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Maher Arar's wife calls for honest debate
Racial profiling must be acknowledged before we can eradicate it, Monia Mazigh tells symposium
Debra Black | Staff Reporter | October 17, 2007
Racial profiling should be acknowledged and discussed so Canadians can actively eliminate it from society, says the wife of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was wrongly arrested by American authorities, interrogated and then sent to Syria where he was tortured.
Sadly, scholars and the media neglect it, Monia Mazigh told a symposium on racial profiling at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education yesterday. "We should raise it, discuss it, eliminate it from our society. But first we need to acknowledge it."
Police and government authorities often deny it, she said. But she knows first hand that it exists, she told the audience. "I experienced it myself. ... Five years ago my husband and myself were labelled `Islamic extremists' by the RCMP and CSIS."
But neither she nor her husband was ever told why. Perhaps it was because she wore a headscarf, her husband had a beard or because they prayed five times a day, she speculated at the seminar, which was sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
As a consequence of that label, Arar was interrogated by U.S. authorities, arrested, imprisoned, sent to Syria, tortured and, about a year later, freed. A federal inquiry recently cleared his name and Ottawa paid him $10.5 million in compensation. He still remains on a U.S. no-fly list. The reason for that is unknown to either Arar or his wife.
The consequences of racial profiling are severe, said Mazigh. Communities feel marginalized and humiliated and the economic consequences can also be devastating with people losing their jobs simply because they've been interviewed by CSIS, she said.
Law enforcement agencies cannot rely simply on religion or appearance to start an investigation, she said.
"I had courage to speak out and denounce the treatment," she said. But not everyone does. She encouraged anyone who has experienced racial profiling to protest loud and long.
Racial profiling is not new to Toronto or, for that matter, Canada, a series of experts told the symposium. Young, black males have been experiencing racial profiling in Toronto for years, experts said. Indeed they said racial profiling has been an ongoing historical problem in Canada – one that has had and will continue to have grave ramifications for all Canadians.
Five years ago, the Toronto Star published a special investigation into racial profiling by Toronto police, said Carol Tator, an anti-racism and equity teacher at York University's anthropology department. That series sparked a lot of denial and debate, said Tator, who along with colleague Frances Henry wrote a book about racial profiling in Canada.
The book was triggered by the Star series and examined the practice of racial profiling and how police culture reinforces racism.
In the series, the Star found after analyzing hundreds of thousands of criminal charges that blacks charged with simple drug possession were taken to a police station more often than whites facing the same charge. The data also showed a disproportionate number of black motorists in the database were ticketed for offences that routinely would come to light after a traffic stop.
Racial profiling doesn't keep citizens safe from violence, Tator said.
"It is violence. ... It can be argued that racial profiling by the police is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Racial profiling exists in many of our democratic institutions."
Racial profiling must be acknowledged before we can eradicate it, Monia Mazigh tells symposium
Debra Black | Staff Reporter | October 17, 2007
Racial profiling should be acknowledged and discussed so Canadians can actively eliminate it from society, says the wife of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was wrongly arrested by American authorities, interrogated and then sent to Syria where he was tortured.
Sadly, scholars and the media neglect it, Monia Mazigh told a symposium on racial profiling at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education yesterday. "We should raise it, discuss it, eliminate it from our society. But first we need to acknowledge it."
Police and government authorities often deny it, she said. But she knows first hand that it exists, she told the audience. "I experienced it myself. ... Five years ago my husband and myself were labelled `Islamic extremists' by the RCMP and CSIS."
But neither she nor her husband was ever told why. Perhaps it was because she wore a headscarf, her husband had a beard or because they prayed five times a day, she speculated at the seminar, which was sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
As a consequence of that label, Arar was interrogated by U.S. authorities, arrested, imprisoned, sent to Syria, tortured and, about a year later, freed. A federal inquiry recently cleared his name and Ottawa paid him $10.5 million in compensation. He still remains on a U.S. no-fly list. The reason for that is unknown to either Arar or his wife.
The consequences of racial profiling are severe, said Mazigh. Communities feel marginalized and humiliated and the economic consequences can also be devastating with people losing their jobs simply because they've been interviewed by CSIS, she said.
Law enforcement agencies cannot rely simply on religion or appearance to start an investigation, she said.
"I had courage to speak out and denounce the treatment," she said. But not everyone does. She encouraged anyone who has experienced racial profiling to protest loud and long.
Racial profiling is not new to Toronto or, for that matter, Canada, a series of experts told the symposium. Young, black males have been experiencing racial profiling in Toronto for years, experts said. Indeed they said racial profiling has been an ongoing historical problem in Canada – one that has had and will continue to have grave ramifications for all Canadians.
Five years ago, the Toronto Star published a special investigation into racial profiling by Toronto police, said Carol Tator, an anti-racism and equity teacher at York University's anthropology department. That series sparked a lot of denial and debate, said Tator, who along with colleague Frances Henry wrote a book about racial profiling in Canada.
The book was triggered by the Star series and examined the practice of racial profiling and how police culture reinforces racism.
In the series, the Star found after analyzing hundreds of thousands of criminal charges that blacks charged with simple drug possession were taken to a police station more often than whites facing the same charge. The data also showed a disproportionate number of black motorists in the database were ticketed for offences that routinely would come to light after a traffic stop.
Racial profiling doesn't keep citizens safe from violence, Tator said.
"It is violence. ... It can be argued that racial profiling by the police is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Racial profiling exists in many of our democratic institutions."
Filed under
GWOT,
Maher Arar,
racial profiling
by Winter Patriot
on Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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Toronto Star : Confront roots of terrorism, not just the symptoms
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Confront roots of terrorism, not just the symptoms
by Haroon Siddiqui | August 5, 2007
Terrorism by Muslims is real. It cannot be wished away. The only debate is how best to tackle it.
The War on Terror has vastly increased terrorism, empowered radicals, strained America's relations with much of the world, and diluted our own democracies.
Many intelligence services, think-tanks and an increasing number of governments now see a clear link between the terrorism and the wars in Iraq, the Israeli Occupied Territories, Afghanistan, etc.
Those who disagree ask: What about Muslim-on-Muslim violence? After all, Muslims are the biggest victims of terrorism. Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. So are supporters of the Islamist Hamas and the secular but mostly Muslim Fatah.
And what of "Islamic terrorism," "Islamist extremism," "radical Islamism," etc.? Al Qaeda does exist, as does Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. So do dozens of other violent groups. They wage jihad against the U.S., Israel and Western allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Some imams spout hate for Christians and Jews from the pulpit. Neither the militant groups nor such imams can be ignored and, in fact, are not. Still, we must ask:
Why have such outfits and individuals emerged in recent years? Why do they find traction? And why is intra-Muslim violence mostly confined to occupied or wartorn lands? Two answers are given.
Violence is part of the genetic makeup of Muslims.
Or we are seeing the blowback of contemporary geopolitics – the U.S. backing of Islamic jihadists in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, the drawn-out Arab-Israeli dispute, the two Gulf wars, the economic sanctions, the ever-present politics of oil, and the widely perceived American double standards.
Every month in Iraq has been a 9/11, every day a 7/7. In Afghanistan, too, there is no peace.
While collateral damage caused by coalition forces is far less now than locals killing locals, there's no escaping responsibility for the civil wars amid the ruins of the physical and social infrastructures.
The British newspaper the Guardian urges Gordon Brown to "acknowledge Britain's role in creating, unintentionally, the conditions for instability, civil wars and mayhem ... Such an approach would not extirpate the terrorist cause in Britain but it would be a start in altering the conditions in which terrorists recruit."
Britain has uncovered 15 terrorist plots since 2001. Some of the plotters have been found guilty. Another 100 await trials.
The convicted were engineers, doctors, gangsters, thieves, drug users; most were born Muslim and others are Christian converts; some are religious and others not.
Most did not come from faraway caves or madrassas but British schools, universities, taverns and cricket and soccer fields. They were angry about the British involvement in Iraq and also identified with global Muslim grievances.
They turned violent at the behest of militant imams, or Al Qaeda or just watching TV or perusing jihadist websites.
Canada is not immune to potential homegrown terrorism, as seen in the 2003 arrest of 22 Muslims and the 2006 arrest of 18 more.
"We need to resolve the conditions and conflicts which create this irrational behaviour," Paul Cavalluzzo, lead counsel to the Maher Arar inquiry, said in an interview.
Equally, the fact that all terrorism-related charges in the 2003 case were dropped, as were charges against three of the 18, suggests that when police and security officials nail suspects, "they should be showing less adrenalin and more sensitivity to due process and people's rights," he said. "Once you're labelled a terrorist, it's a difficult label to remove for the rest of your life – like being called a Communist in the McCarthy era."
Let's wage war against Al Qaeda. Keep an eye on the peddlers of hate. Initiate early warning systems to detect the radicalization of the young. Crack down on suspected criminals and prosecute them in speedy, transparent trials.
But doing all that while ignoring the conflicts that create the rage is to just treat the symptoms of the disease.
Happily, there are signs that this process is now underway.
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday in World and Sunday in the A-section. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
by Haroon Siddiqui | August 5, 2007
Terrorism by Muslims is real. It cannot be wished away. The only debate is how best to tackle it.
The War on Terror has vastly increased terrorism, empowered radicals, strained America's relations with much of the world, and diluted our own democracies.
Many intelligence services, think-tanks and an increasing number of governments now see a clear link between the terrorism and the wars in Iraq, the Israeli Occupied Territories, Afghanistan, etc.
Those who disagree ask: What about Muslim-on-Muslim violence? After all, Muslims are the biggest victims of terrorism. Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. So are supporters of the Islamist Hamas and the secular but mostly Muslim Fatah.
And what of "Islamic terrorism," "Islamist extremism," "radical Islamism," etc.? Al Qaeda does exist, as does Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. So do dozens of other violent groups. They wage jihad against the U.S., Israel and Western allies, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Some imams spout hate for Christians and Jews from the pulpit. Neither the militant groups nor such imams can be ignored and, in fact, are not. Still, we must ask:
Why have such outfits and individuals emerged in recent years? Why do they find traction? And why is intra-Muslim violence mostly confined to occupied or wartorn lands? Two answers are given.
Violence is part of the genetic makeup of Muslims.
Or we are seeing the blowback of contemporary geopolitics – the U.S. backing of Islamic jihadists in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, the drawn-out Arab-Israeli dispute, the two Gulf wars, the economic sanctions, the ever-present politics of oil, and the widely perceived American double standards.
Every month in Iraq has been a 9/11, every day a 7/7. In Afghanistan, too, there is no peace.
While collateral damage caused by coalition forces is far less now than locals killing locals, there's no escaping responsibility for the civil wars amid the ruins of the physical and social infrastructures.
The British newspaper the Guardian urges Gordon Brown to "acknowledge Britain's role in creating, unintentionally, the conditions for instability, civil wars and mayhem ... Such an approach would not extirpate the terrorist cause in Britain but it would be a start in altering the conditions in which terrorists recruit."
Britain has uncovered 15 terrorist plots since 2001. Some of the plotters have been found guilty. Another 100 await trials.
The convicted were engineers, doctors, gangsters, thieves, drug users; most were born Muslim and others are Christian converts; some are religious and others not.
Most did not come from faraway caves or madrassas but British schools, universities, taverns and cricket and soccer fields. They were angry about the British involvement in Iraq and also identified with global Muslim grievances.
They turned violent at the behest of militant imams, or Al Qaeda or just watching TV or perusing jihadist websites.
Canada is not immune to potential homegrown terrorism, as seen in the 2003 arrest of 22 Muslims and the 2006 arrest of 18 more.
"We need to resolve the conditions and conflicts which create this irrational behaviour," Paul Cavalluzzo, lead counsel to the Maher Arar inquiry, said in an interview.
Equally, the fact that all terrorism-related charges in the 2003 case were dropped, as were charges against three of the 18, suggests that when police and security officials nail suspects, "they should be showing less adrenalin and more sensitivity to due process and people's rights," he said. "Once you're labelled a terrorist, it's a difficult label to remove for the rest of your life – like being called a Communist in the McCarthy era."
Let's wage war against Al Qaeda. Keep an eye on the peddlers of hate. Initiate early warning systems to detect the radicalization of the young. Crack down on suspected criminals and prosecute them in speedy, transparent trials.
But doing all that while ignoring the conflicts that create the rage is to just treat the symptoms of the disease.
Happily, there are signs that this process is now underway.
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday in World and Sunday in the A-section. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
Filed under
Maher Arar,
terrorism,
UK
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, August 05, 2007
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NYT : Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.
By SCOTT SHANE | September 25, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.
That is one of the disclosures in the 1,200-page report released last week after a two-year Canadian investigation of Mr. Arar’s case found him to be innocent of any terrorist ties. The report urges the Canadian government to formally protest the American treatment of Mr. Arar, a recommendation Canadian officials are considering.
Mr. Arar, 37, who now lives in British Columbia, has a lawsuit against United States officials and agencies that is on appeal, and he has demanded an explanation for his treatment from the Bush administration.
A close reading of the Arar Commission report offers a rare window on American actions in the case, describing seemingly flimsy evidence behind the American decision in 2002 to send Mr. Arar to a country notorious for torture; a deliberate attempt by American officials to deceive Canada about where Mr. Arar was; and lingering confusion among top American officials about the two countries’ roles in the case.
President Bush earlier this month acknowledged for the first time that high-level people suspected of being terrorists had been held in secret prisons overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency. But he and other officials have said nothing publicly about the American practice of rendition, in which dozens of suspects have been seized and turned over for interrogation to other countries, including several known to engage routinely in torture.
Cases like that of Mr. Arar would not be affected by the compromise legislation on detainee treatment worked out between the White House and Republican senators last week, since it would have no effect on interrogation methods used by other countries. In fact, the proposed bill would strip non-Americans held overseas under United States control of the right to challenge their detention in federal court.
“It’s a huge hole in what Congress is doing,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents Mr. Arar in his lawsuit. “The government can still send people secretly to other countries where they’ll be tortured.”
For nearly four years, the United States government has refused to make public any information on the case of Mr. Arar, which has become an international symbol of American excesses in the campaign against terrorism. The Bush administration refused to cooperate with the Canadian commission, so many questions about American actions and motives remain unanswered.
But Mr. Arar’s case is more public than other cases of rendition, because he was detained inside the United States and legally deported, creating a modest paper trail. The three-volume report describes Canadian contacts with American officials in meticulous detail, offering by far the fullest account of any rendition case to date.
The commission’s report says inexperienced Canadian police officials originally passed inaccurate information to the United States linking Mr. Arar to terrorism, based largely on his acquaintance with other men under suspicion.
But in the days after Sept. 26, 2002, when Mr. Arar was detained while changing planes at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, a flurry of calls and faxes between the countries included more equivocal information.
An Oct. 4 fax to the F.B.I. from Canadian counterterrorism officials said that they “had yet to complete either a detailed investigation of Mr. Arar or a link analysis on him,” and that “while he has had contact with many individuals of interest to this project we are unable to indicate links to Al Qaeda.”
That was particularly significant because the commission concludes that all, or virtually all, of the United States’ knowledge of any threat posed by Mr. Arar came from the Canadians.
The next day, on Saturday, Oct. 5, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police official spoke by phone with an unidentified F.B.I. official. “During this conversation, the FBI official said that the Americans feared they did not have sufficient information to support charges against Mr. Arar,” the report says.
The Canadian officer said that likewise, “There was insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Arar in Canada.”
Canadian officials told the Americans that if they allowed Mr. Arar to travel home to Canada, he would be kept under surveillance. But by then the Americans were already secretly working on the Syrian option, a legal possibility because Mr. Arar retained his citizenship in Syria, where he was born.
“The American authorities appear to have intentionally kept Canadian officials in the dark about their plans to remove Mr. Arar to Syria,” the report says.
Despite the uncertain report from Canada on Mr. Arar and terrorism, on Oct. 7, an Immigration and Naturalization Service official ruled that evidence “clearly and unequivocally reflects that Mr. Arar is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, to wit, Al Qaeda.” At 4 a.m. the next day, Mr. Arar was bundled aboard a Gulfstream jet that flew him to Jordan, from which he was driven to a prison in neighboring Syria.
Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, lead counsel to the Arar Commission, said he found the American actions inconsistent. “On Saturday,” Mr. Cavalluzzo said, “you have the F.B.I. saying, ‘We don’t have enough to charge him.’ On Monday, he’s a member of Al Qaeda. Well, if he’s a member of Al Qaeda, in your country he can be charged.”
Even after Mr. Arar arrived in Syria, American officials did not tell their Canadian counterparts. Only two weeks later, on Oct. 21, did Canada get confirmation, when a Syrian military intelligence officer phoned the Canadian ambassador in Damascus to say he was in custody.
Mr. Arar spent 10 months in the custody of Syrian interrogators who beat him repeatedly with a heavy metal cable and held him in a dank cell scarcely larger than a coffin, according to the commission report. In October 2003, he was released and returned to his wife and children in Canada.
But some top American officials appear to have been misinformed about the deportation decision. After Jean Chrétien, then Canadian prime minister, said publicly that the United States had decided unilaterally to send Mr. Arar to Syria, the Canadian ambassador was summoned to the National Security Council and scolded by Frances Townsend, the deputy national security adviser, who said it had been a “joint decision,” the report says.
Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, had also suggested publicly that the Canadians were complicit in the Syria deportation. But on Dec. 1, 2003, Mr. Powell called Bill Graham, the Canadian foreign minister, to say the United States had not consulted Canada about the decision.
“I was mistaken,” Mr. Powell told Mr. Graham, the report says.
The Canadian judge who led the inquiry, Dennis R. O’Connor, urged a formal protest over the American conduct. Peter MacKay, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, said Thursday it was too early to decide on a protest but added that there was an “urgent need” for talks on the issues raised by the case.
A State Department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, said Friday that she knew of no plans for such talks. She said the Bush administration had declined to cooperate with the Arar Commission because its “mandate was to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials, and Canadian authorities were therefore the most appropriate entities to respond.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, Tasia Scolinos, said that she could not respond in detail to the commission’s findings but that the United States government “removed Mr. Arar in full compliance with the law and all applicable international treaties and conventions.” She also said the government “sought assurances with respect to Mr. Arar’s treatment” in Syria.
Mr. Cavalluzzo, the commission counsel, noted that the report held Canadian officials accountable for many lapses. But in an interview on Friday from Toronto, he said he remained “troubled” by American actions, chiefly the decision to turn Mr. Arar over to a government whose promises not to torture him had no credibility.
“Even at this time, when terrorism is a real danger,” he said, “this case points out how important it is to preserve the democratic rights we have cherished for centuries.”
By SCOTT SHANE | September 25, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.
That is one of the disclosures in the 1,200-page report released last week after a two-year Canadian investigation of Mr. Arar’s case found him to be innocent of any terrorist ties. The report urges the Canadian government to formally protest the American treatment of Mr. Arar, a recommendation Canadian officials are considering.
Mr. Arar, 37, who now lives in British Columbia, has a lawsuit against United States officials and agencies that is on appeal, and he has demanded an explanation for his treatment from the Bush administration.
A close reading of the Arar Commission report offers a rare window on American actions in the case, describing seemingly flimsy evidence behind the American decision in 2002 to send Mr. Arar to a country notorious for torture; a deliberate attempt by American officials to deceive Canada about where Mr. Arar was; and lingering confusion among top American officials about the two countries’ roles in the case.
President Bush earlier this month acknowledged for the first time that high-level people suspected of being terrorists had been held in secret prisons overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency. But he and other officials have said nothing publicly about the American practice of rendition, in which dozens of suspects have been seized and turned over for interrogation to other countries, including several known to engage routinely in torture.
Cases like that of Mr. Arar would not be affected by the compromise legislation on detainee treatment worked out between the White House and Republican senators last week, since it would have no effect on interrogation methods used by other countries. In fact, the proposed bill would strip non-Americans held overseas under United States control of the right to challenge their detention in federal court.
“It’s a huge hole in what Congress is doing,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents Mr. Arar in his lawsuit. “The government can still send people secretly to other countries where they’ll be tortured.”
For nearly four years, the United States government has refused to make public any information on the case of Mr. Arar, which has become an international symbol of American excesses in the campaign against terrorism. The Bush administration refused to cooperate with the Canadian commission, so many questions about American actions and motives remain unanswered.
But Mr. Arar’s case is more public than other cases of rendition, because he was detained inside the United States and legally deported, creating a modest paper trail. The three-volume report describes Canadian contacts with American officials in meticulous detail, offering by far the fullest account of any rendition case to date.
The commission’s report says inexperienced Canadian police officials originally passed inaccurate information to the United States linking Mr. Arar to terrorism, based largely on his acquaintance with other men under suspicion.
But in the days after Sept. 26, 2002, when Mr. Arar was detained while changing planes at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, a flurry of calls and faxes between the countries included more equivocal information.
An Oct. 4 fax to the F.B.I. from Canadian counterterrorism officials said that they “had yet to complete either a detailed investigation of Mr. Arar or a link analysis on him,” and that “while he has had contact with many individuals of interest to this project we are unable to indicate links to Al Qaeda.”
That was particularly significant because the commission concludes that all, or virtually all, of the United States’ knowledge of any threat posed by Mr. Arar came from the Canadians.
The next day, on Saturday, Oct. 5, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police official spoke by phone with an unidentified F.B.I. official. “During this conversation, the FBI official said that the Americans feared they did not have sufficient information to support charges against Mr. Arar,” the report says.
The Canadian officer said that likewise, “There was insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Arar in Canada.”
Canadian officials told the Americans that if they allowed Mr. Arar to travel home to Canada, he would be kept under surveillance. But by then the Americans were already secretly working on the Syrian option, a legal possibility because Mr. Arar retained his citizenship in Syria, where he was born.
“The American authorities appear to have intentionally kept Canadian officials in the dark about their plans to remove Mr. Arar to Syria,” the report says.
Despite the uncertain report from Canada on Mr. Arar and terrorism, on Oct. 7, an Immigration and Naturalization Service official ruled that evidence “clearly and unequivocally reflects that Mr. Arar is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, to wit, Al Qaeda.” At 4 a.m. the next day, Mr. Arar was bundled aboard a Gulfstream jet that flew him to Jordan, from which he was driven to a prison in neighboring Syria.
Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, lead counsel to the Arar Commission, said he found the American actions inconsistent. “On Saturday,” Mr. Cavalluzzo said, “you have the F.B.I. saying, ‘We don’t have enough to charge him.’ On Monday, he’s a member of Al Qaeda. Well, if he’s a member of Al Qaeda, in your country he can be charged.”
Even after Mr. Arar arrived in Syria, American officials did not tell their Canadian counterparts. Only two weeks later, on Oct. 21, did Canada get confirmation, when a Syrian military intelligence officer phoned the Canadian ambassador in Damascus to say he was in custody.
Mr. Arar spent 10 months in the custody of Syrian interrogators who beat him repeatedly with a heavy metal cable and held him in a dank cell scarcely larger than a coffin, according to the commission report. In October 2003, he was released and returned to his wife and children in Canada.
But some top American officials appear to have been misinformed about the deportation decision. After Jean Chrétien, then Canadian prime minister, said publicly that the United States had decided unilaterally to send Mr. Arar to Syria, the Canadian ambassador was summoned to the National Security Council and scolded by Frances Townsend, the deputy national security adviser, who said it had been a “joint decision,” the report says.
Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, had also suggested publicly that the Canadians were complicit in the Syria deportation. But on Dec. 1, 2003, Mr. Powell called Bill Graham, the Canadian foreign minister, to say the United States had not consulted Canada about the decision.
“I was mistaken,” Mr. Powell told Mr. Graham, the report says.
The Canadian judge who led the inquiry, Dennis R. O’Connor, urged a formal protest over the American conduct. Peter MacKay, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, said Thursday it was too early to decide on a protest but added that there was an “urgent need” for talks on the issues raised by the case.
A State Department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, said Friday that she knew of no plans for such talks. She said the Bush administration had declined to cooperate with the Arar Commission because its “mandate was to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials, and Canadian authorities were therefore the most appropriate entities to respond.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, Tasia Scolinos, said that she could not respond in detail to the commission’s findings but that the United States government “removed Mr. Arar in full compliance with the law and all applicable international treaties and conventions.” She also said the government “sought assurances with respect to Mr. Arar’s treatment” in Syria.
Mr. Cavalluzzo, the commission counsel, noted that the report held Canadian officials accountable for many lapses. But in an interview on Friday from Toronto, he said he remained “troubled” by American actions, chiefly the decision to turn Mr. Arar over to a government whose promises not to torture him had no credibility.
“Even at this time, when terrorism is a real danger,” he said, “this case points out how important it is to preserve the democratic rights we have cherished for centuries.”
Filed under
Bush,
Congress,
extraordinary rendition,
Maher Arar
by Winter Patriot
on Monday, September 25, 2006
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CBC : RCMP commissioner should break silence on Arar report: Layton
Friday, September 22, 2006
RCMP commissioner should break silence on Arar report: Layton
CBC News | September 22, 2006
RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's public silence about the federal report that criticized the force for its role in the Maher Arar case is unacceptable, NDP Leader Jack Layton said Friday.
"Silence is not an appropriate response after the injustices that Maher Arar and his family have experienced. It's simply not acceptable. And now we're hearing all kinds of rumours," Layton said.
He was referring to speculation on Parliament Hill about the fate of Zaccardelli, who as of Friday had not yet made a public statement about the report that criticized the RCMP this week for its role in the deportation and torture of Arar. He has been reportedly out of the country on RCMP business.
A number of opposition MPs have called for his resignation.
The Arar report, released Monday by Justice Dennis O'Connor, said it was very likely that the United States used inaccurate information obtained from the RCMP when it detained Arar in New York City in 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held for nearly a year. U.S. authorities had accused Arar of having links to al-Qaeda. Arar is a Canadian citizen.
The report, which was highly critical of the RCMP, said:
* Mounties gave erroneous information to the U.S. about Arar.
* Senior officers should have monitored less experienced officers more closely.
* The force should have supported efforts by the Department of Foreign Affairs to secure Arar's release from Syria.
* RCMP failed to provide accurate information to the federal government about its national security investigation into Arar.
Rumour of resignation questioned
In the House of Commons on Thursday, Liberal MP Dan McTeague asked Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day about the possibility that Zaccardelli has already tried to step down.
"Can I ask the minister of public safety to confirm that the commissioner of the RCMP offered his resignation to the prime minister and this resignation was not accepted?" McTeague asked Day during Question Period.
Day did not answer the question directly. Instead, he said he had talked to Zaccardelli on Wednesday, two days after the report was released.
"I met with the commissioner yesterday and received assurances that a number of the recommendations of the Arar report were already being implemented. It was very clearly agreed that all of the recommendations would be followed through," Day told the House.
Day said that he sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to inform him Canada has taken Arar and his wife, Monia Mazigh, off the watch lists used at border points to identify potential terrorists and suggesting "the United States might wish to do the same."
But Layton said the federal government should take a stronger stand on the issue. "Mr. Day's reaction was nothing short of pathetic. He says he's suggested to the Americans that they may want to consider removing the family. Is that how our government is going to stand up for us when we've been wronged by another state?"
The U.S. has yet to respond to the request.
MacKay talked to Rice about Arar report
On Thursday, the federal standing committee on public safety and national security met to talk about the Arar report but committee members have not made a decision to have the RCMP commissioner appear before the committee.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay said in New York City that he spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the findings of the Arar report but he declined to release details of their conversation.
When pressed for details, MacKay said: "Well, I'm not going to tell you what we said. But we've certainly had discussions. I spoke with Secretary Rice and we, of course, want to give them the opportunity to examine from their perspective what can be done differently and hopefully prevent anything like this from happening again."
The House of Commons apologized to Arar on Wednesday for Canadian involvement in his ordeal.
CBC News | September 22, 2006
RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's public silence about the federal report that criticized the force for its role in the Maher Arar case is unacceptable, NDP Leader Jack Layton said Friday.
"Silence is not an appropriate response after the injustices that Maher Arar and his family have experienced. It's simply not acceptable. And now we're hearing all kinds of rumours," Layton said.
He was referring to speculation on Parliament Hill about the fate of Zaccardelli, who as of Friday had not yet made a public statement about the report that criticized the RCMP this week for its role in the deportation and torture of Arar. He has been reportedly out of the country on RCMP business.
A number of opposition MPs have called for his resignation.
The Arar report, released Monday by Justice Dennis O'Connor, said it was very likely that the United States used inaccurate information obtained from the RCMP when it detained Arar in New York City in 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held for nearly a year. U.S. authorities had accused Arar of having links to al-Qaeda. Arar is a Canadian citizen.
The report, which was highly critical of the RCMP, said:
* Mounties gave erroneous information to the U.S. about Arar.
* Senior officers should have monitored less experienced officers more closely.
* The force should have supported efforts by the Department of Foreign Affairs to secure Arar's release from Syria.
* RCMP failed to provide accurate information to the federal government about its national security investigation into Arar.
Rumour of resignation questioned
In the House of Commons on Thursday, Liberal MP Dan McTeague asked Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day about the possibility that Zaccardelli has already tried to step down.
"Can I ask the minister of public safety to confirm that the commissioner of the RCMP offered his resignation to the prime minister and this resignation was not accepted?" McTeague asked Day during Question Period.
Day did not answer the question directly. Instead, he said he had talked to Zaccardelli on Wednesday, two days after the report was released.
"I met with the commissioner yesterday and received assurances that a number of the recommendations of the Arar report were already being implemented. It was very clearly agreed that all of the recommendations would be followed through," Day told the House.
Day said that he sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to inform him Canada has taken Arar and his wife, Monia Mazigh, off the watch lists used at border points to identify potential terrorists and suggesting "the United States might wish to do the same."
But Layton said the federal government should take a stronger stand on the issue. "Mr. Day's reaction was nothing short of pathetic. He says he's suggested to the Americans that they may want to consider removing the family. Is that how our government is going to stand up for us when we've been wronged by another state?"
The U.S. has yet to respond to the request.
MacKay talked to Rice about Arar report
On Thursday, the federal standing committee on public safety and national security met to talk about the Arar report but committee members have not made a decision to have the RCMP commissioner appear before the committee.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay said in New York City that he spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the findings of the Arar report but he declined to release details of their conversation.
When pressed for details, MacKay said: "Well, I'm not going to tell you what we said. But we've certainly had discussions. I spoke with Secretary Rice and we, of course, want to give them the opportunity to examine from their perspective what can be done differently and hopefully prevent anything like this from happening again."
The House of Commons apologized to Arar on Wednesday for Canadian involvement in his ordeal.
Filed under
Maher Arar,
Michael Chertoff
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, September 22, 2006
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Findlaw : Thoughts on the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006"
Friday, September 22, 2006
Thoughts on the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006"
By JOHN W. DEAN | Findlaw | September 22, 2006
There are lots of good reasons to employ military tribunals to bring terrorists to justice. One of the most persuasive is to keep terrorists out of the American criminal justice system. Trying them in federal courts could endanger the lives of judges, juries, and prosecutors - not to mention their families. It is unfair to assign such life-threatening work to civilians.
Imagine the practical problems in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice in any federal district court anywhere. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the security system at even the best protected federal courthouse, never envisioned such an enemy (with his own covert army of suicidal supporters) as a defendant.
Or think about the problem of incarcerating or executing bin Laden at any federal prison after his conviction. His supporters will never believe he received a fair trial, or that he should be punished for anything. It would no doubt take an army to provide protection to those involved in the processes.
For these (among many other) reasons, it makes sense to create a system of military justice capable of dealing with these unique criminals, for the armed services are far better equipped to deal with these problems, and they have volunteered for such hazardous work. So why, five years into the war on terror, has the Bush Administration been unable to bring a single terrorist to trial?
The answer, it seems, is that politics has trumped everything for Bush. The war on terror helps elect Republicans; bringing terrorists to trial, however, could embarrass Republicans - for federal courts are making the Administration play by the rules.
Ignoring the Supreme Court's Ruling on Tribunals
When the use of tribunals was first suggested in 2001, I was among those who thought it a sound concept. The devil, however, arrived later with the details. It never occurred to me (and most people) that Bush & Co. would design a system more befitting a totalitarian state than a democratic nation that once led the world by its good example. Nor was it anticipated that Bush would play endless politics with terrorism.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the makeshift, draconian procedures that the Bush Administration employed for military tribunals. Not unexpectedly, the high Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld closed down the tribunals. Hamdan also provided a blueprint for the type of system that would pass constitutional muster, thus providing both the Administration and the Congress with guidelines that would get the job done.
The Court found many problems with Bush's tribunals, in Hamdan: There was no legal basis for their existence, given that they had been created by order of the president without Congressional authority. In charging Hamdan with the crime of conspiracy, they had created an offense unknown to the laws of war. Moreover, and most fundamentally, the tribunals ignored the standards of the Geneva Conventions.
Since the inception of the Bush Administration's war against terror, the President has claimed - unreasonably and without justification - that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to this war with stateless forces such as al Qaeda (or similar organizations) for they are not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. But Bush is wrong.
The Hamdan Court explained that "Article 3, often referred to as Common Article 3 because … it appears in all four Geneva Conventions" applies here. Moreover, the Court noted, Common Article 3 prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
The Court explained further that the Geneva Conventions do not specify the meaning of the phrase "a regularly constituted court," but it also noted that commentary accompanying a provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention, for example, defines "regularly constituted" tribunals to include "ordinary military courts." (In addition, one of the Red Cross' treatises defines "regularly constituted court" as used in Common Article 3 to mean "established and organized in accordance with the laws and procedures already in force in a country.") Significantly, the majority opinion all but suggested that the procedures found in Uniform Code of Military Justice for court martial proceedings define what it means for a body to be "a regularly constituted court" that meets the Common Article 3 standard.
To respond to the Supreme Court's ruling, Bush sent a detailed legislative recommendation to Congress in early September 2006. Remarkably, while his proposal recognizes that the high Court struck down his earlier effort, it makes little effort to comply with the ruling. (FindLaw columnists Joanne Mariner and Sherry Colb have commented earlier on the issues raised by this proposed legislation, and I will not repeat the analysis here.)
But commentary (including my own) cannot begin to convey the blatant nature of the Administration's refusal to follow the Court's ruling. Examples are too numerous to detail in this brief column, but none is better than the refusal to meet the Common Article 3 standard of "regularly constituted courts."
Bush's Proposed Tribunals Do Not Meet the Common Article 3 Standard.
In the Congressional findings of the Administration's legislative proposal, called the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006" and introduced by Majority Leader Bill Frist, no words are minced. In summarizing the proposal, the draft makes clear it will not follow court-martial law as an example of a "regularly constituted court." In fact, there is no "regularly constituted court" in the United States that follows the procedures requested by the Administration.
More specifically, the bill states: "In a time of ongoing armed conflict, it generally is neither practicable nor appropriate for combatants like al Qaeda terrorists to be tried before tribunals that include all of the procedures associated with courts-martial."
Accordingly, the proposed legislation declares that the tribunals will not "share classified information with the accused" -- or, apparently, the accused's attorney, even though that attorney would be an officer of the court, if not a commissioned military officer. The bill also declares permissible "the use of hearsay evidence" because "applying the hearsay rules from the Manual for Courts-Martial or from the Federal Rules of Evidence would make it virtually impossible" to convict the terrorists. And it says terrorists will not benefit from the guarantee of "speedy trials" and other "technical rules."
In short, the Administration has asked Congress for legislation that, on its face, fails to meet the standard of creating tribunals that qualify as "regularly constituted court[s] affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Giving Torturers a Pass for War Crimes
These, however, are only a few of the provisions in the legislation that are contrary to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. In addition, and most tellingly, Bush seeks to retroactively amend the federal criminal provisions that the United States adopted to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush Administration's proposed legislation removes a thirty-nine word definition in the Federal Criminal Code defining "war crimes" as including "any conduct … which constitutes a violation of common Article 3," and replacing that definition with a seven hundred and eighty-six word laundry list of what the Administration wants to define as war crimes.
Since 1949, when this accord was signed, Common Article 3 has prohibited "(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; and (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Bush claims, however, that these terms are too vague. So he has offered new definitions for the war crimes statue. Not surprisingly, he offers no equivalent language to "violence to life and person," "cruel treatment," "outrages upon personal dignity," and most strikingly, "passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court." With regard to this last prohibition of Common Article 3, Bush is asking Congress to join him in violating it by establishing tribunals contrary to this treaty.
But no provision of the proposed law is more telling that the law's provision mandating its own retroactive application. It states, in effect, that it has been the law since September 11, 2001. This, of course, is intended to ensure that all those officials and employees of the Bush government who have been involved in war crimes (acts prohibited by Common Article 3) are home free.
It is a retroactive immunization of torturers. It also retroactively removes the jurisdiction of all federal courts relating to any pending or future habeas corpus actions filed by detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In fact, it takes the federal courts out of the business of providing any redress whatsoever to any alien detained for any reason as "an unlawful enemy combatant."
Removal of All Rights of Redress for Enemy Combatants
One of the most sweeping provisions of this proposed law takes the federal courts out of the business of providing any redress whatsoever, to anyone who becomes entangled - correctly or incorrectly - on the wrong side of the war on terror. It simply removes federal jurisdiction "to hear or consider any claim or cause of action, including an application for a writ of habeas corpus" filed by any non-citizen of the United States who has been detained "as an unlawful enemy combatant." (Many bloggers have called for Democrats to filibuster the proposed law for this reason alone.)
This term is vaguely defined to mean anyone who the President or the Secretary of Defense claims is "part of or affiliated with a force or organization--including but not limited to al Qaeda, the Taliban, any international terrorist organization, or associated forces--engaged in hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents; in violation of the law of war;" or has "committed a hostile act in aid of such a force or organization so engaged;" or has "supported hostilities in aid of such a force or organization so engaged."
In short, this could include anyone the federal government (Bush and Rumsfeld will delegate and re-delegate this authority) labels "an unlawful enemy combatant." The type of tragic case that comes immediately to mind is that of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian, was arrested on September 26, 2002, when he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York, traveling home from a vacation in Tunisia. American officials sent him to Syria, where he was tortured for ten months.
A high-level special commission of the Canadian government has cleared Arar, establishing that he was in no way connected with terror. The American government refused all efforts to clear Arar, and has been fighting his lawsuit - which aims to clear his name, as well as to rectify the injustice done him by the United States. If the Bush Administration's proposed legislation becomes law, the cases of detainees like Arar will simply be tossed.
Republicans with Conscience Have Joined Democrats in Objecting; Democrats, However, Have been Remarkably Silent
The fate of the Administration's proposal remains unclear at this writing. A number of high-profile Republicans, such as former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and George Schultz, have spoken out against the proposal. Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, reports that some eight Republicans oppose the bill on varying grounds. There is talk of a filibuster. There is also talk of a presidential veto if Bush doesn't get what he wants.
Frankly, this proposed legislation is shameful. Even the much-heralded opposition of a few Republicans - Senator John Warner of Virginia, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Senator John McCain of Arizona - does little to correct the many deep flaws in this proposal.
This proposal, however, is going to tell us a great deal about where we are as a nation, for as General Powell said, "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts." As will amending the war crimes law to absolve prior wrongs, denying detainees "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples," and enacting a law that insults the Supreme Court.
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.
Copyright © 1994-2006 FindLaw
By JOHN W. DEAN | Findlaw | September 22, 2006
There are lots of good reasons to employ military tribunals to bring terrorists to justice. One of the most persuasive is to keep terrorists out of the American criminal justice system. Trying them in federal courts could endanger the lives of judges, juries, and prosecutors - not to mention their families. It is unfair to assign such life-threatening work to civilians.
Imagine the practical problems in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice in any federal district court anywhere. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the security system at even the best protected federal courthouse, never envisioned such an enemy (with his own covert army of suicidal supporters) as a defendant.
Or think about the problem of incarcerating or executing bin Laden at any federal prison after his conviction. His supporters will never believe he received a fair trial, or that he should be punished for anything. It would no doubt take an army to provide protection to those involved in the processes.
For these (among many other) reasons, it makes sense to create a system of military justice capable of dealing with these unique criminals, for the armed services are far better equipped to deal with these problems, and they have volunteered for such hazardous work. So why, five years into the war on terror, has the Bush Administration been unable to bring a single terrorist to trial?
The answer, it seems, is that politics has trumped everything for Bush. The war on terror helps elect Republicans; bringing terrorists to trial, however, could embarrass Republicans - for federal courts are making the Administration play by the rules.
Ignoring the Supreme Court's Ruling on Tribunals
When the use of tribunals was first suggested in 2001, I was among those who thought it a sound concept. The devil, however, arrived later with the details. It never occurred to me (and most people) that Bush & Co. would design a system more befitting a totalitarian state than a democratic nation that once led the world by its good example. Nor was it anticipated that Bush would play endless politics with terrorism.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the makeshift, draconian procedures that the Bush Administration employed for military tribunals. Not unexpectedly, the high Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld closed down the tribunals. Hamdan also provided a blueprint for the type of system that would pass constitutional muster, thus providing both the Administration and the Congress with guidelines that would get the job done.
The Court found many problems with Bush's tribunals, in Hamdan: There was no legal basis for their existence, given that they had been created by order of the president without Congressional authority. In charging Hamdan with the crime of conspiracy, they had created an offense unknown to the laws of war. Moreover, and most fundamentally, the tribunals ignored the standards of the Geneva Conventions.
Since the inception of the Bush Administration's war against terror, the President has claimed - unreasonably and without justification - that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to this war with stateless forces such as al Qaeda (or similar organizations) for they are not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. But Bush is wrong.
The Hamdan Court explained that "Article 3, often referred to as Common Article 3 because … it appears in all four Geneva Conventions" applies here. Moreover, the Court noted, Common Article 3 prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
The Court explained further that the Geneva Conventions do not specify the meaning of the phrase "a regularly constituted court," but it also noted that commentary accompanying a provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention, for example, defines "regularly constituted" tribunals to include "ordinary military courts." (In addition, one of the Red Cross' treatises defines "regularly constituted court" as used in Common Article 3 to mean "established and organized in accordance with the laws and procedures already in force in a country.") Significantly, the majority opinion all but suggested that the procedures found in Uniform Code of Military Justice for court martial proceedings define what it means for a body to be "a regularly constituted court" that meets the Common Article 3 standard.
To respond to the Supreme Court's ruling, Bush sent a detailed legislative recommendation to Congress in early September 2006. Remarkably, while his proposal recognizes that the high Court struck down his earlier effort, it makes little effort to comply with the ruling. (FindLaw columnists Joanne Mariner and Sherry Colb have commented earlier on the issues raised by this proposed legislation, and I will not repeat the analysis here.)
But commentary (including my own) cannot begin to convey the blatant nature of the Administration's refusal to follow the Court's ruling. Examples are too numerous to detail in this brief column, but none is better than the refusal to meet the Common Article 3 standard of "regularly constituted courts."
Bush's Proposed Tribunals Do Not Meet the Common Article 3 Standard.
In the Congressional findings of the Administration's legislative proposal, called the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006" and introduced by Majority Leader Bill Frist, no words are minced. In summarizing the proposal, the draft makes clear it will not follow court-martial law as an example of a "regularly constituted court." In fact, there is no "regularly constituted court" in the United States that follows the procedures requested by the Administration.
More specifically, the bill states: "In a time of ongoing armed conflict, it generally is neither practicable nor appropriate for combatants like al Qaeda terrorists to be tried before tribunals that include all of the procedures associated with courts-martial."
Accordingly, the proposed legislation declares that the tribunals will not "share classified information with the accused" -- or, apparently, the accused's attorney, even though that attorney would be an officer of the court, if not a commissioned military officer. The bill also declares permissible "the use of hearsay evidence" because "applying the hearsay rules from the Manual for Courts-Martial or from the Federal Rules of Evidence would make it virtually impossible" to convict the terrorists. And it says terrorists will not benefit from the guarantee of "speedy trials" and other "technical rules."
In short, the Administration has asked Congress for legislation that, on its face, fails to meet the standard of creating tribunals that qualify as "regularly constituted court[s] affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Giving Torturers a Pass for War Crimes
These, however, are only a few of the provisions in the legislation that are contrary to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. In addition, and most tellingly, Bush seeks to retroactively amend the federal criminal provisions that the United States adopted to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush Administration's proposed legislation removes a thirty-nine word definition in the Federal Criminal Code defining "war crimes" as including "any conduct … which constitutes a violation of common Article 3," and replacing that definition with a seven hundred and eighty-six word laundry list of what the Administration wants to define as war crimes.
Since 1949, when this accord was signed, Common Article 3 has prohibited "(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; and (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Bush claims, however, that these terms are too vague. So he has offered new definitions for the war crimes statue. Not surprisingly, he offers no equivalent language to "violence to life and person," "cruel treatment," "outrages upon personal dignity," and most strikingly, "passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court." With regard to this last prohibition of Common Article 3, Bush is asking Congress to join him in violating it by establishing tribunals contrary to this treaty.
But no provision of the proposed law is more telling that the law's provision mandating its own retroactive application. It states, in effect, that it has been the law since September 11, 2001. This, of course, is intended to ensure that all those officials and employees of the Bush government who have been involved in war crimes (acts prohibited by Common Article 3) are home free.
It is a retroactive immunization of torturers. It also retroactively removes the jurisdiction of all federal courts relating to any pending or future habeas corpus actions filed by detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In fact, it takes the federal courts out of the business of providing any redress whatsoever to any alien detained for any reason as "an unlawful enemy combatant."
Removal of All Rights of Redress for Enemy Combatants
One of the most sweeping provisions of this proposed law takes the federal courts out of the business of providing any redress whatsoever, to anyone who becomes entangled - correctly or incorrectly - on the wrong side of the war on terror. It simply removes federal jurisdiction "to hear or consider any claim or cause of action, including an application for a writ of habeas corpus" filed by any non-citizen of the United States who has been detained "as an unlawful enemy combatant." (Many bloggers have called for Democrats to filibuster the proposed law for this reason alone.)
This term is vaguely defined to mean anyone who the President or the Secretary of Defense claims is "part of or affiliated with a force or organization--including but not limited to al Qaeda, the Taliban, any international terrorist organization, or associated forces--engaged in hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents; in violation of the law of war;" or has "committed a hostile act in aid of such a force or organization so engaged;" or has "supported hostilities in aid of such a force or organization so engaged."
In short, this could include anyone the federal government (Bush and Rumsfeld will delegate and re-delegate this authority) labels "an unlawful enemy combatant." The type of tragic case that comes immediately to mind is that of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian, was arrested on September 26, 2002, when he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York, traveling home from a vacation in Tunisia. American officials sent him to Syria, where he was tortured for ten months.
A high-level special commission of the Canadian government has cleared Arar, establishing that he was in no way connected with terror. The American government refused all efforts to clear Arar, and has been fighting his lawsuit - which aims to clear his name, as well as to rectify the injustice done him by the United States. If the Bush Administration's proposed legislation becomes law, the cases of detainees like Arar will simply be tossed.
Republicans with Conscience Have Joined Democrats in Objecting; Democrats, However, Have been Remarkably Silent
The fate of the Administration's proposal remains unclear at this writing. A number of high-profile Republicans, such as former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and George Schultz, have spoken out against the proposal. Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, reports that some eight Republicans oppose the bill on varying grounds. There is talk of a filibuster. There is also talk of a presidential veto if Bush doesn't get what he wants.
Frankly, this proposed legislation is shameful. Even the much-heralded opposition of a few Republicans - Senator John Warner of Virginia, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Senator John McCain of Arizona - does little to correct the many deep flaws in this proposal.
This proposal, however, is going to tell us a great deal about where we are as a nation, for as General Powell said, "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts." As will amending the war crimes law to absolve prior wrongs, denying detainees "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples," and enacting a law that insults the Supreme Court.
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.
Copyright © 1994-2006 FindLaw
Filed under
Bush,
Congress,
Maher Arar,
Rumsfeld,
Taliban
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, September 22, 2006
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The Independent : Canadian terror suspect tortured in Syria after 'rendition' by US
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Canadian terror suspect tortured in Syria after 'rendition' by US
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington | September 20, 2006
Campaigners have demanded that the Bush administration be held accountable for the illegal seizure of a Canadian citizen who was handed over to Syrian authorities and subsequently tortured.
They said the case of Maher Arar, who was cleared by a Canadian public inquiry of being any threat to that country's national security, exposed the faults of President Bush's "war on terror".
The inquiry concluded that Mr Arar, who was seized by US agents while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and incarcerated in Syria for 10 months, was the victim of false information about his alleged link to al-Qa'ida being passed by Canadian police to the US.
"I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada," Dennis O'Connor, the Associate Chief Justice of Ontario who carried out the inquiry, said in the report.
Mr Arar, who was born in Syria, has detailed how he was tortured, beaten and whipped with electrical cable during his incarceration. The commission concluded Mr Arar's experiences in jail "fit squarely with the publicly reported Syrian practices of torturing prisoners".
At a press conference after the release of the report on Monday, Mr Arar said: "Justice O'Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation. I call on the government of Canada to accept the findings of this report and hold these people responsible."
He added: "I have waited a long time to have my name cleared. I was tortured and lost a year of my life. I will never be the same. The United States must take responsibility for what it did to me and must stop destroying more innocent lives with its unlawful actions."
The conclusions of the inquiry - with which the US and Syrian authorities refused to co-operate - include a number of recommendations for the Canadian authorities, particularly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But campaigners said the inquiry exposed the unaccountability of the Bush administration and its ability to seize foreign citizens without a court order and arrange for their incarceration by governments known to have a record of torture.
Julia Hall, a campaigner with Human Rights Watch, said: "[The report] is only half justice for Maher Arar. There will not be justice until the US government is held accountable for these illegal transfers... Until there is a full exposé of the US's role there will only be half justice for Maher."
The US has been condemned for its "rendition" of prisoners to other countries where they have been covertly incarcerated and sometimes tortured.
The inquiry concluded that there was no evidence that Canadian officials participated in or agreed to the decision to send Mr Arar to Syria. But it recommended that in future cases information should not be provided to a foreign country where there is a risk that it could lead to a person being tortured.
Justice O'Connor recommended that the Canadian government file formal complaints with the US and Syrian governments. "They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there," he said.
He also called for a full investigation into the cases of three other Syrian-Canadians who were incarcerated in Syria and apparently subjected to torture and mistreatment. The men - Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin - were held for various periods before being released.
A spokesman for the US Department of Justice, Charles Miller, said it had no comment on the inquiry's findings. The Department is opposing a lawsuit brought by Mr Arar against the Bush administration.
Mr Arar, a software engineer, is living in Kamloops, British Columbia, where his wife teaches at a university. Mr Arar said he has struggled to find work since he was released from Syrian custody as employers did not want "the publicity" associated with hiring him. He said being officially cleared could help him return to a normal life. "I know that once you are branded with something, as a killer or a terrorist, it's going to stay for life," he told the CanWest News Service prior to the report's release. "There's always doubt in people's minds, right?"
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington | September 20, 2006
Campaigners have demanded that the Bush administration be held accountable for the illegal seizure of a Canadian citizen who was handed over to Syrian authorities and subsequently tortured.
They said the case of Maher Arar, who was cleared by a Canadian public inquiry of being any threat to that country's national security, exposed the faults of President Bush's "war on terror".
The inquiry concluded that Mr Arar, who was seized by US agents while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and incarcerated in Syria for 10 months, was the victim of false information about his alleged link to al-Qa'ida being passed by Canadian police to the US.
"I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada," Dennis O'Connor, the Associate Chief Justice of Ontario who carried out the inquiry, said in the report.
Mr Arar, who was born in Syria, has detailed how he was tortured, beaten and whipped with electrical cable during his incarceration. The commission concluded Mr Arar's experiences in jail "fit squarely with the publicly reported Syrian practices of torturing prisoners".
At a press conference after the release of the report on Monday, Mr Arar said: "Justice O'Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation. I call on the government of Canada to accept the findings of this report and hold these people responsible."
He added: "I have waited a long time to have my name cleared. I was tortured and lost a year of my life. I will never be the same. The United States must take responsibility for what it did to me and must stop destroying more innocent lives with its unlawful actions."
The conclusions of the inquiry - with which the US and Syrian authorities refused to co-operate - include a number of recommendations for the Canadian authorities, particularly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But campaigners said the inquiry exposed the unaccountability of the Bush administration and its ability to seize foreign citizens without a court order and arrange for their incarceration by governments known to have a record of torture.
Julia Hall, a campaigner with Human Rights Watch, said: "[The report] is only half justice for Maher Arar. There will not be justice until the US government is held accountable for these illegal transfers... Until there is a full exposé of the US's role there will only be half justice for Maher."
The US has been condemned for its "rendition" of prisoners to other countries where they have been covertly incarcerated and sometimes tortured.
The inquiry concluded that there was no evidence that Canadian officials participated in or agreed to the decision to send Mr Arar to Syria. But it recommended that in future cases information should not be provided to a foreign country where there is a risk that it could lead to a person being tortured.
Justice O'Connor recommended that the Canadian government file formal complaints with the US and Syrian governments. "They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there," he said.
He also called for a full investigation into the cases of three other Syrian-Canadians who were incarcerated in Syria and apparently subjected to torture and mistreatment. The men - Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin - were held for various periods before being released.
A spokesman for the US Department of Justice, Charles Miller, said it had no comment on the inquiry's findings. The Department is opposing a lawsuit brought by Mr Arar against the Bush administration.
Mr Arar, a software engineer, is living in Kamloops, British Columbia, where his wife teaches at a university. Mr Arar said he has struggled to find work since he was released from Syrian custody as employers did not want "the publicity" associated with hiring him. He said being officially cleared could help him return to a normal life. "I know that once you are branded with something, as a killer or a terrorist, it's going to stay for life," he told the CanWest News Service prior to the report's release. "There's always doubt in people's minds, right?"
Filed under
Bush,
extraordinary rendition,
Maher Arar
by Winter Patriot
on Wednesday, September 20, 2006
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Arar case raises ghost of past RCMP follies on security front
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Arar case raises ghost of past RCMP follies on security front
Jim Brown | The Canadian Press | September 19, 2006
OTTAWA -- Never has there been stronger proof that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
More than two decades after a royal commission found the RCMP had committed theft and arson in the name of combatting Quebec separatism, the Mounties are under fire again, this time for inadvertently abetting the arrest and torture of a Canadian citizen.
“It’s shocking to me that this type of sloppy, incompetent, dishonest investigation is still taking place,” former Liberal solicitor general Warren Allmand declared when the report of the Maher Arar inquiry was made public.
“What does this say about the attitudes of some of the officers in the force and the training they receive?”
Shirley Heafey, former head of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission was less surprised.
“A lot of investigations I carried out really worried me,” said Heafey, who frequently complained during her term that she lacked the power to really hold the police to account.
“They do a lot of things well, but they do a lot of things that would be regarded by Canadians as not very good. And a lot of energy is spent camouflaging and hiding this.”
The comments were prompted by the findings of Justice Dennis O’Connor, who discovered the RCMP had passed inaccurate and misleading information about Arar to the United States as part of an anti-terrorism investigation.
The judge concluded the material “very likely” led the Americans to arrest Arar and ship him to Syria, where he was tortured into false confessions of links to al-Qaida.
There was a haunting sense of deja vu for those who recalled the inquiry headed by Justice David McDonald, who reported in 1981 the Mounties had repeatedly broken the law in the ostensible defence of national security.
McDonald’s solution, eventually adopted by the government of Pierre Trudeau, was to abolish the old RCMP security service and replace it with the current Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The idea was to let the Mounties do what they did best while transferring to CSIS the broader power to monitor security threats that fell short of criminal acts.
It turned out to be easier to draw that line in theory than in practice, a point driven home by the 1985 Air India bombing that took more than 300 lives.
The subsequent investigation of the worst terrorist act in Canadian history was hampered by persistent turf wars between the Mounties and CISS, a tale that will be probed belatedly by yet another public inquiry that opens next week under former Supreme Court justice John Major.
The pendulum swung to the other extreme following the 9-11 attacks five years ago, when CSIS handed over its files on Islamic militants in Canada holus-bolus to the RCMP.
The theory this time was that the police were better placed to deter any imminent terrorist attacks than was CSIS, which could keep people under surveillance but had no legal power to arrest them or lay charges.
“The RCMP didn’t simply thrust itself back into the world of intelligence investigations, the government demanded it,” says Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto expert in security issues.
“What happened is that the RCMP was unready and unable to perform the function.”
O’Connor recommended better training of front-line officers and better co-ordination by their superiors. He will also lay out, in a second report later this fall, a model for a new oversight body to monitor RCMP security work and guard against abuses.
Wark notes that the British are able to work comfortably under a system in which their civilian security service MI-5 collaborates closely with Scotland Yard and other police forces.
There’s no reason the same system can’t be made to work in Canada. But the British have a key ingredient that’s lacking here: a long tradition of top-down political direction of security work from the cabinet level.
The jury is still out on whether Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will provide that kind of leadership.
“This is a government that came to power with virtually no experience of the intricacies of national security work,” says Wark. “To be honest, I think they still don’t know where they’re going with it.”
© The Canadian Press
Jim Brown | The Canadian Press | September 19, 2006
OTTAWA -- Never has there been stronger proof that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
More than two decades after a royal commission found the RCMP had committed theft and arson in the name of combatting Quebec separatism, the Mounties are under fire again, this time for inadvertently abetting the arrest and torture of a Canadian citizen.
“It’s shocking to me that this type of sloppy, incompetent, dishonest investigation is still taking place,” former Liberal solicitor general Warren Allmand declared when the report of the Maher Arar inquiry was made public.
“What does this say about the attitudes of some of the officers in the force and the training they receive?”
Shirley Heafey, former head of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission was less surprised.
“A lot of investigations I carried out really worried me,” said Heafey, who frequently complained during her term that she lacked the power to really hold the police to account.
“They do a lot of things well, but they do a lot of things that would be regarded by Canadians as not very good. And a lot of energy is spent camouflaging and hiding this.”
The comments were prompted by the findings of Justice Dennis O’Connor, who discovered the RCMP had passed inaccurate and misleading information about Arar to the United States as part of an anti-terrorism investigation.
The judge concluded the material “very likely” led the Americans to arrest Arar and ship him to Syria, where he was tortured into false confessions of links to al-Qaida.
There was a haunting sense of deja vu for those who recalled the inquiry headed by Justice David McDonald, who reported in 1981 the Mounties had repeatedly broken the law in the ostensible defence of national security.
McDonald’s solution, eventually adopted by the government of Pierre Trudeau, was to abolish the old RCMP security service and replace it with the current Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The idea was to let the Mounties do what they did best while transferring to CSIS the broader power to monitor security threats that fell short of criminal acts.
It turned out to be easier to draw that line in theory than in practice, a point driven home by the 1985 Air India bombing that took more than 300 lives.
The subsequent investigation of the worst terrorist act in Canadian history was hampered by persistent turf wars between the Mounties and CISS, a tale that will be probed belatedly by yet another public inquiry that opens next week under former Supreme Court justice John Major.
The pendulum swung to the other extreme following the 9-11 attacks five years ago, when CSIS handed over its files on Islamic militants in Canada holus-bolus to the RCMP.
The theory this time was that the police were better placed to deter any imminent terrorist attacks than was CSIS, which could keep people under surveillance but had no legal power to arrest them or lay charges.
“The RCMP didn’t simply thrust itself back into the world of intelligence investigations, the government demanded it,” says Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto expert in security issues.
“What happened is that the RCMP was unready and unable to perform the function.”
O’Connor recommended better training of front-line officers and better co-ordination by their superiors. He will also lay out, in a second report later this fall, a model for a new oversight body to monitor RCMP security work and guard against abuses.
Wark notes that the British are able to work comfortably under a system in which their civilian security service MI-5 collaborates closely with Scotland Yard and other police forces.
There’s no reason the same system can’t be made to work in Canada. But the British have a key ingredient that’s lacking here: a long tradition of top-down political direction of security work from the cabinet level.
The jury is still out on whether Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will provide that kind of leadership.
“This is a government that came to power with virtually no experience of the intricacies of national security work,” says Wark. “To be honest, I think they still don’t know where they’re going with it.”
© The Canadian Press
CBC : Arar report expected to be censored: newspaper
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Arar report expected to be censored: newspaper
CBC News | September 16, 2006
Maher Arar says he expects the report from the inquiry into his case will clear his name and explain why he was imprisoned and tortured in Syria. But a published report says parts of the report will be censored in the name of national security.
The federal judicial commission of inquiry, led by Justice Dennis O'Connor, will be released in Ottawa on Monday.
The Globe and Mail on Saturday quoted federal sources as saying certain references will be deleted out of concern they could identify informants or hurt diplomatic relations with countries that provided Ottawa with intelligence reports in confidence.
However, the inquiry report is expected to shed light on the role Canadian officials played in Arar's deportation to Syria, carried out in 2002 by U.S. officials who suspected him of involvement in al-Qaeda.
The 35-year-old software engineer, who was born in Syria, has said he hopes the report will not only clear his name, but also reveal whether there is a pattern of intelligence-sharing that jeopardizes the safety of Canadians.
The RCMP has admitted sharing information about the case with American officials and that it had Arar under surveillance, but never found any hard evidence against him. But both the Mounties and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say they played no role in the U.S. decision to deport Arar to Syria.
Report result of months of testimony
The findings by O'Connor, associate chief justice of Ontario, will be handed down after 127 days of public testimony and the review of more than 2,400 documents, some of which are thousands of pages long.
Arar was detained during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport on Sept. 26, 2002, as he was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia, where he had been on vacation with his family.
He was flown to Jordan, then driven to Syria, where he was kept in a military prison for more than 10 months.
Arar said he underwent physical and psychological torture. He said he was beaten with an electric cable and given so little food that he lost 40 pounds while living in a rat-infested cell measuring only six feet long by three feet wide.
A fact-finder's report for the commission concluded that Arar was tortured while in Syrian custody.
Arar recently moved from Ottawa to Kamloops in the B.C. Interior, a decision he says has been good for his psyche.
"I like the mountains," he told CBC News. "I can tell you definitely since I came here my stress level went down, just by going to the balcony to look at the mountains."
Despite a continued fear of flying, Arar is boarding a plane back to Ottawa to hear O'Connor's findings.
CBC News | September 16, 2006
Maher Arar says he expects the report from the inquiry into his case will clear his name and explain why he was imprisoned and tortured in Syria. But a published report says parts of the report will be censored in the name of national security.
The federal judicial commission of inquiry, led by Justice Dennis O'Connor, will be released in Ottawa on Monday.
The Globe and Mail on Saturday quoted federal sources as saying certain references will be deleted out of concern they could identify informants or hurt diplomatic relations with countries that provided Ottawa with intelligence reports in confidence.
However, the inquiry report is expected to shed light on the role Canadian officials played in Arar's deportation to Syria, carried out in 2002 by U.S. officials who suspected him of involvement in al-Qaeda.
The 35-year-old software engineer, who was born in Syria, has said he hopes the report will not only clear his name, but also reveal whether there is a pattern of intelligence-sharing that jeopardizes the safety of Canadians.
The RCMP has admitted sharing information about the case with American officials and that it had Arar under surveillance, but never found any hard evidence against him. But both the Mounties and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say they played no role in the U.S. decision to deport Arar to Syria.
Report result of months of testimony
The findings by O'Connor, associate chief justice of Ontario, will be handed down after 127 days of public testimony and the review of more than 2,400 documents, some of which are thousands of pages long.
Arar was detained during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport on Sept. 26, 2002, as he was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia, where he had been on vacation with his family.
He was flown to Jordan, then driven to Syria, where he was kept in a military prison for more than 10 months.
Arar said he underwent physical and psychological torture. He said he was beaten with an electric cable and given so little food that he lost 40 pounds while living in a rat-infested cell measuring only six feet long by three feet wide.
A fact-finder's report for the commission concluded that Arar was tortured while in Syrian custody.
Arar recently moved from Ottawa to Kamloops in the B.C. Interior, a decision he says has been good for his psyche.
"I like the mountains," he told CBC News. "I can tell you definitely since I came here my stress level went down, just by going to the balcony to look at the mountains."
Despite a continued fear of flying, Arar is boarding a plane back to Ottawa to hear O'Connor's findings.
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