The inquiry, which focused on the Canadian intelligence services, found that agents who were under pressure to find terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, falsely labeled an Ottawa computer consultant, Maher Arar, as a dangerous radical. They asked U.S. authorities to put him and his wife, a university economist, on the al-Qaeda "watchlist," without justification, the report said.
Arar was also listed as "an Islamic extremist individual" who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O’Connor.
Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan — where he never has been — and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.
O’Connor concluded that "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.
Although the report centered on Canadian actions, the counsel for the commission, Paul Cavalluzzo, said the results show that the U.S. practice of renditions "ought to be reviewed."
Confinement without probable cause, without due process, without judicial review is bound to produce results like this. Lawmakers and Policemen live with the daily problem of our system’s insistence on the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," of Miranda Warnings, of the rights of the accused. They live with all the difficulties these checks and balances cause, sometimes with resentment, but they live with them. Our system has taken the civilized approach that we would rather err on the side of letting some criminals slip through some cracks than to imprison innocent people. It’s a choice we made a long time ago, following England’s lead. England had made the other error, and our Founders could see its disasterous outcome.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney seem to have no problem with the high likelihood that we will have a large number of people like Maher Arar falsely imprisoned, tortured, affected for life by being treated as less than human. They don’t listen to the intelligence we do have, like that there were no real indicators of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, yet they are obsessed with approving torture and unfair trials for "detainees" – unconvicted, loosely suspect people. They seem to think that the barbarism of our enemies justifies our acting in kind.
There is a great shame on our head as a people because of their actions, actions already approved. Our leaders are in a situation where there is "probable cause" to indict them for crimes against humanity, War Crimes. They are asking the Congress and the American people to retroactively pardon them. I think not – at least that’s what I personally think. Nixon was pardoned for his crimes. I wasn’t pleased about that back then, but at least he was driven out of office and his guilt was a matter of public record. Neither Bush nor Cheney have been put on trial. They are asking to be pardoned while maintaining that they did nothing wrong. We can live with "innocent until proven guilty." I don’t think we have to live with "innocent even if guilty."
It’s not, in my mind, just an issue of punishment for their actions. It’s about making a clear statement that their perversion of Executive power is unconstitutional, criminal, and has no place in our history forevermore. These men have lied, abused power, and manipulated our system beyond anything ever seen in this country. We cannot just let it pass. It’s been too destructive. I don’t know if we can recover as a nation, but I do know that if we don’t make a clear stand now, recovery is impossible. What’s happened in these last six years is beyond partisan, beyond politics, it is a national tragedy.
The only ammend we can make to Maher Arar and the uncounted others like him is to insure that no one will ever suffer his fate again. Of course we will make mistakes. Even with probable cause, due process, and judicial review, we’ll make errors. But Maher Arar’s fate was guaranteed, not by errors, but by the active ignoring of our basic approach to all human beings…
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