Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says

[MountainLaurel]

Welcome to Kafka0Land, boys and girls.

Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800883.html

[gratuitous]

1. The ability to torture becomes the obligation to torture

And I'll keep saying it and saying it. As soon as you say, "Well, we have to torture these bad guys, because, well, they're bad guys and that's what it takes to find out what they know," you have now established the obligation to torture anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Here's why: If you're going to torture the "bad guys," you'll wind up having to torture the "not so bad guys," too. Remember what Rumsfeld said? There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown stuff. How do you know this guy in custody is one of the bad guys or one of the not so bad guys? Can you take the chance that you suspect he's not so bad, but that you don't know that he's not so bad? Maybe he's an unknown quantity; you can't know everything a person. And since it's better to be safe than sorry -- terrorist attack-wise -- you'd probably better douse him with water and put him in a 50° room. Just to be sure. He might crack.

Although . . . if he doesn't crack, maybe we need to use more extreme measures. He could be one of the really wily ones. Crafty devils, those terrorists. Warm up the cattle prod and poke him a few times. Still nothing? Gosh, maybe he doesn't really know anything.

But wait. Maybe he's gone through secret training that we know nothing about, and is inured to electric shocks. I hate to do it, but we're gonna have to waterboard him. Nothing personal, you understand, but I don't know how I'd live with myself if a terrorist attack happened and this guy knew something about it and I just didn't use the right aggressive method for getting the information out of him.

And so, to avoid any potential embarrassment somewhere down the line in the one-thousandth of one percent chance that you're dealing with the super-duper terrorist, you have to, you must use every means at your disposal. Just to be as sure as you can be. Because to do any less could consign thousands of innocents to horrific deaths in a terrorist attack. And those thousands of potential victims outweigh this one poor schlub in the cell. Every time.

[MountainLaurel]

2. I think you're absolutely correct

Which makes for a frightening indictment of the direction in which this country is being pulled.

[pberq]

3. there was no evidence implicating Maher in terrorism.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/19/1348206

<snip>
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. You have spent the last few days with Maher Arar. Can you talk about his reaction to the judge's finding? And clearly lay out what this report says.

MARIA LAHOOD: Maher is really relieved. He’s certainly happy to have his name finally cleared and to try to move on with his life. The inquiry, as you mentioned, it's been a two-year process. You know, the judge, commissioner looked at over 20,000 documents. There were over 70 witnesses. There was in-camera testimony. He looked at all of the national security documents. And he basically found that, as you said, there was no evidence implicating Maher in terrorism. There had been a long investigation by law enforcement agencies here, and it actually even continued after Maher got back from Syria, and the investigation included U.S. cooperation. The justice said, the commissioner said that the U.S. never provided Canada with its own information to support that Maher had al-Qaeda ties and that it likely would have given the close cooperation if it had had it.

So all of this incorrect information, this inflammatory information that Canada provided to the U.S. was what was used in the U.S.'s designation of him as an al-Qaeda member and to send him to Syria to be tortured. Some of that information -- you know, first of all, the RCMP here gave information to the U.S. saying that Maher and his wife Monia were Islamic extremists with al-Qaeda ties. That was just false. Everyone -- I guess every witness that the inquiry interviewed said that that was false and that there was no reason to say that, no basis at all. There was evidence or there was statements given to the U.S. government saying that Maher was in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. on 9/11. That was false. They said that when they requested an interview with Maher, that he refused to be interviewed and suddenly left to Tunisia. That was patently false. So this is the information that the U.S. government used to determine that he was an al-Qaeda member and to send him to Syria to be tortured. And now, this is the information that they claim, I imagine, is a state secret, which prevents him from seeking justice in the United States for what they did to him.

[MountainLaurel]

4. We tortured an innocent man

And how many others?

:cry:

[gratuitous]

5. Genuine gratuitous brand

:kick: