A question of decency

CBC News has background on the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar. On September 26, 2002, Arar was on his way back to Montreal alone from a family vacation in Tunisia. Unfortunately for him, he had to change planes at Kennedy Airport in New York. There was snatched by INS agents, questioned, held incommunicado for nearly two weeks, and then deported - to Syria. All based on "evidence" from what Tom Ridge called the "international intelligence community," evidence which of course neither Arar nor anyone else working on his behalf has ever been allowed to see.

After a year in captivity in Syria during which time he was tortured and held in solitary confinement for 10 months, on October 5 he was released to Canada. No charges are filed and the Canadian government says it has no information that would have justified his detention.

The US justified sending Arar to Syria rather than Canada because he was born in Syria and had dual citizenship. Yes, he did have dual citizenship, but why Syria instead of Canada, where he lived? The probable reason, as noted by David Cole in the December 1 issue of "The Nation" (online availability limited to subscribers), is that Syria would be more than willing to torture him to get information while we could continue to lay claim to lily-white hands.

The practice of sending prisoners to nations that will use torture is called "rendition." Cole writes:

According to unnamed CIA officials quoted in the Washington Post, such "renditions" are a matter of official policy, not some egregious mistake. To paraphrase Joseph Welch's famous question to Senator Joe McCarthy, Have we no sense of decency?

There is a Chinese proverb that goes "Some questions need only be asked."

Footnote: On November 5, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien (sorry, I don't know how to make the diacritical mark in html) said his government has asked Colin Powell for an explanation of the matter.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure it will be immediately forthcoming.

Update: Through Cursor.org I learn that the Washington Post reports that it was then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson who signed the order sending Arar to Syria instead of home to Canada. He did this despite the fact that the law used to remove Arar forbids sending anyone, even on national security grounds, to a country where "it is more likely than not that they will be tortured," in the words of "a U.S. official familiar with the law applied in the Arar case" quoted by the Post.