Errors led to Canadian's torture

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Errors_led_to_Canadian_s_torture.html?siteSect=143&sid=7077475&cKey=1158640690000

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian police wrongly identified an Ottawa software engineer as an Islamic extremist, prompting U.S. agents to deport him to Syria, where he was tortured, an official inquiry concluded on Monday.

Maher Arar, who holds Canadian and Syrian nationality, was arrested in New York in September 2002 and accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In fact, said the judge who led the probe, all the signs point to the fact Arar was innocent.

Arar, 36, says he was repeatedly tortured in the year he spent in Damascus jails, and the inquiry agreed that he had been tortured. He was freed in 2003.

Judge Dennis O'Connor, who was asked by the Canadian government in 2004 to examine what had happened, found the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had wrongly told U.S. authorities that Arar was an Islamic extremist.

[etherealtruth]

1. Well all I can say is ...

"Thank God" the United States NEVER makes these errors:sarcasm:

This is so horrifying and in all likelihood very common.

As a human being, I am sickened and disgusted

[mikelewis]

2. Thank goodness Muslims aren't human beings...

otherwise, this would be wrong.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. If the information had been accurate

Then everything would have been okay.

That's the impression I've been getting from this morning's news stories about this terrible incident -- not that what was done to the man was wrong, but only that it's a shame it was done to the wrong man.