It's feet to the fire time-U.S. legislators to see file on Arar

[tjwash]

Full Article Here

January 18, 2007
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON– U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, facing accusations he has abused core American values and invited condemnation from his country's closest ally, says he will open his government's file on Maher Arar next week.

Gonzales yesterday told Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, he would share with legislators the Bush administration's rationale for barring the British Columbia man from entering the United States, even after he was cleared of any terror links by a commission of inquiry in Canada.

He said he would also seek to open the file to the general public.

Gonzales sat silently for much of his confrontation with Leahy, a sign of the changed atmosphere in Washington where Democrats now rule Congress and have vowed tough oversight of what they consider the erosion of American liberties under the Bush administration's so-called war on terror.

*snip* for those who don't know who Arar is

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was returning to Ottawa from a vacation in 2002 when he was detained by American officials at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport – based on erroneous information provided by the RCMP, according to Justice Dennis O'Connor's report – then "rendered" to Syria, where he was held for 10 months and tortured.

American authorities did not tell Canadian officials that they had sent Arar to Syria.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, confirmed late last year that, despite the findings of the Canadian probe, Arar remains on a U.S. watch list.

Love how Leahy finally got tired of Gonzalez's crap today and gave him a week to produce the report. A thing of beauty that Congressional beatdown was...

[napi21]

1. Yep, andI bet Leahy will followup on that threat! Thank God the

Dems are showing just how tired they are of the BS of the last 12 years!

[magellan]

2. I wonder how much of Arar's file will be redacted for "national security" reasons

We'll have to see.

In the meantime I'm heartened by this article. I think this is one of the first times I've heard anyone in Congress aside from the usual suspects -- Kucinich for example -- expressing the appropriate level of cynicism about this administration and what it says versus what it does. It seems Leahy really gets it:

Leahy also sparked laughter by mocking Gonzales' statement that former Attorney-General John Ashcroft had received assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured.

"It is easy for us to sit here comfortably in this room knowing that we're not going to be sent off to another country to be tortured, to treat it as though, well, Attorney-General Ashcroft says we've got assurances," Leahy said.

"Assurances from a country that we also say, now, we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything?"