Outsourcing torture

[Guest guest]

" Alison Weir " <alisonweir

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:21:24 -0800

 

 

 

 

Outsourcing torture

Please read below an important article by Bob Herbert from the New

York Times.

 

[ ADDENDUM: While it is excellent that Mr. Herbert comments on the

following disturbing facts, it is unfortunate that he has never

chosen, in the decades that Israel's routine torture of prisoners has

been known, to write about that subject. For more information, go to

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/torture.html ]

 

 

 

 

Bob Herbert: Outsourcing torture

 

Bob Herbert The New York Times

 

Saturday, February 12, 2005

 

 

NEW YORK Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to

Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a

family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at

Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was changing planes.

..

Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane

Mayer tells us in a deeply disturbing article in the current issue of

The New Yorker, he " was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by

plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet. "

..

In an instant, Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare,

courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with

him from Kennedy " flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine,

stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan. "

..

Any rights Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian

citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the

trip, Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio

communications as members of " the Special Removal Unit. " He was being

taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would

be tortured.

..

The title of Mayer's article is " Outsourcing Torture. " It's a detailed

account of the frightening and extremely secretive U.S. program known

as " extraordinary rendition. " This is one of the great euphemisms of

our time. Extraordinary rendition is the name that's been given to the

policy of seizing individuals without even the semblance of due

process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to

practice torture. In terms of bad behavior, it stands side by side

with contract killings.

..

Our henchmen in places like Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Uzbekistan and

Jordan are torturing terror suspects at the behest of a nation - the

United States - that just went through a national election in which

the issue of moral values was supposed to have been decisive. How in

the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is

considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?

..

As Mayer pointed out: " Terrorism suspects in Europe, Africa, Asia and

the Middle East have often been abducted by hooded or masked American

agents, then forced onto a Gulfstream V jet, like the one described by

Arar. Upon arriving in foreign countries, rendered suspects often

vanish. Detainees are not provided with lawyers, and many families are

not informed of their whereabouts. "

..

Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of

terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in

Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist. " Although he initially

tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his

tormentors wanted him to say, " Mayer wrote.

..

The confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported

back to the United States that they could find no links between Arar

and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being

charged and is now back in Canada.

..

Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for

Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar in a lawsuit against

the United States. I asked her to describe Arar's physical and

emotional state following his release from custody.

..

She sounded shaken by the memory. " He's not a big guy, " she said. " He

had lost more than 40 pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes

were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside. "

..

Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is

a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their

voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if

not collaborators.

..

There is a widespread notion in the United States that everybody

seized by the government in its so-called war on terror is in fact

somehow connected to terrorist activity. That is just wildly wrong.

..

Tony Blair knows a little about that sort of thing. Just on Wednesday,

the British prime minister formally apologized to 11 people who were

wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for bombings in England by the

Irish Republican Army three decades ago.

..

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping

and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's

wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

 

 

 

Alison Weir

Executive Director

If Americans Knew

www.ifamericansknew.org

310.441.8580