MetroWest Daily News (MA): Arar deserves an apology

[tuvor]

Thanks in part to the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, the stories of innocent people swept up in the war on terror are rarely told. Some of those stories are no doubt locked up at Guantanamo or secret prisons overseas, perhaps forever.

Maher Arar is the exception. He's been able to tell the story of how he was grabbed by U.S. authorities while changing planes in New York on his way home to Canada, how he was held for weeks without charges or access to due process, how the CIA transported him to Syria, where he was locked up and tortured for 10 months.

A Canadian citizen, Arar was released through pressure from his family and the Canadian government, and his story received much attention north of the border. The Daily News followed his story as well, because he lived in Framingham and worked at MathWorks in Natick before moving to Canada. But Arar's story hasn't attracted much attention here in the United States. Nor has it inspired what the Canadian government gave late last week: an apology.

<snip>

When a mistake is made, even with the best of intentions, a mature individual acknowledges it and apologizes. When the government makes a mistake, especially one that ruins the life of an innocent man, those the government represents should demand no less.

What the United States did to Maher Arar was wrong. The honorable response of a mature nation in such a circumstance starts with an apology and reparations. After that, we'd like to see President Bush make a promise not to let it happen again.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/8998969563064303615

[struggle4progress]

1. The al-Masri case is another one worth watching:

The Wronged Man
Unjustly Imprisoned and Mistreated, Khaled al-Masri Wants Answers the U.S. Government Doesn't Want to Give

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; Page C01

RICHMOND, Nov. 28

Khaled al-Masri was supposed to have been disappeared by black-hooded CIA paramilitaries in the dead of night. One minute he was riding a bus in Macedonia, the next -- poof -- gone. Grabbed by Macedonian agents, handed off to junior CIA operatives in Skopje and then secretly flown to a prison in Afghanistan that didn't officially exist, to be interrogated with rough measures that weren't officially on the books. And then never to be heard from again -- one fewer terrorist in the post-9/11 world.

Instead, on Tuesday, Masri finds himself sitting in an American courtroom so elegant that even his experienced lawyers are commenting on its beautiful dark wood and graceful chandeliers. Dressed in white shirt sleeves and a modest maroon vest, Masri is waiting to see if the judges will allow the CIA to disappear him again ...

If they have their way this time, the pale Justice Department lawyers swaying back in their chairs before the three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit would prohibit any judge and any jury anywhere from ever hearing the arguments in Masri's six legal pleadings and 40 exhibits, more than 1,000 pages in all. Much of the evidence was unearthed by German prosecutors and European Parliament investigators ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801810.html

September 21, 2006
Suspected CIA Kidnappers Identified

The US intelligence agents involved in wrongly kidnapping a German citizen of Arab descent could soon face warrants for their arrest. Clues to their identity have turned up from Spanish authorities and German TV journalists.

The case of Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured in secret CIA prisons, continues to unfold. According to a report in the German press on Thursday, the US intelligence agents who wrongly abducted al-Masri might be confronted with warrants for their arrest, as details of their identities become known to German prosecutors.

Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that prosecutors had received a list of names of suspected US kidnappers from Spanish officials. "We now have very specific questions for the Spanish authorities," state prosecutor August Stern told the paper.

Al-Masri says he was wrongly abducted on New Year's Eve 2003 in Macedonia and detained in various secret overseas prisons often referred to as "black sites." His five month ordeal finally ended when he was dumped on an abandoned road in Albania ...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,438371,00.html

Day in Court Denied for Victim of CIA Kidnapping and Rendition, Khaled El-Masri (5/19/2006)

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it will continue to pursue a fair hearing for Khaled El-Masri, a victim of the CIA policy of illegal abduction and detention known as extraordinary rendition. The ACLU said that the government is abusing the state secrets privilege to cover up its kidnapping and torture of an innocent man.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied El-Masri access to justice yesterday because, according to the court, the simple fact of holding proceedings would jeopardize state secrets, a position advanced by the CIA.

"The court's decision gives the government a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from any scrutiny or accountability," said Ben Wizner, an attorney with the ACLU. "Depriving Khaled El-Masri of his day in court on the ground that the government cannot disclose facts that the whole world already knows only compounds the brutal treatment he endured."

In his opinion, Judge T.S. Ellis III held that CIA properly invoked the state secrets to dismiss El-Masri's lawsuit, notwithstanding the vast amount of public information concerning El-Masri's claims. The court acknowledged, however, that "if El-Masri's allegations are true or essentially true, then all fair-minded people, including those who believe that state secrets must be protected, that this lawsuit cannot proceed, and that renditions are a necessary step to take in this war, must also agree that El-Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country's mistake and deserves a remedy." ...

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/25606prs20060519.html

Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 December 2005, 03:17 GMT
Man sues CIA over torture claims

A man who says he was a victim of the CIA's alleged secret prisons is suing its former chief over torture claims.

Khaled al-Masri says he was kidnapped in 2003 while on holiday in Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan and mistreated.

His is a rare legal challenge to the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - flying suspects to third countries without judicial process ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4504292.stm

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
German Citizen Released After Months in 'Rendition'

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 4, 2005; Page A01

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations ...

"They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association" with terrorism, one CIA officer said.

While the CIA admitted to Germany's then-Interior Minister Otto Schily that it had made a mistake, it has labored to keep the specifics of Masri's case from becoming public. As a German prosecutor works to verify or debunk Masri's claims of kidnapping and torture, the part of the German government that was informed of his ordeal has remained publicly silent. Masri's attorneys say they intend to file a lawsuit in U.S. courts this week ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301476.html