http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060919_robert_scheer_rendering_unto_syria/
Rendering Unto Syria Posted on Sep 19, 2006 By Robert Scheer What an outrage for the president to invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his address to the United Nations, a day after a Canadian government commission accused the U.S. of rendering a Canadian to Syria for torture. Did no one on his staff inform the president that Article 5 of that declaration explicitly states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"? For those, like Bush, who regard torture as a variant of college fraternity hazing, it would be instructive to consider the fate of Maher Arar as revealed in that devastating Canadian judicial report released on Monday. Arar, a Canadian citizen and engineer who had fled repressive Syria two decades earlier as a teenager, was seized by the FBI at JFK Airport and "rendered" to the government of Syria for nearly a year of being whipped with a "shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented"-that is, when he was not confined to his coffin-size cage. The United States transported Arar to the very same Syria which Bush has been condemning since his first days in office, and as he did again on Tuesday, calling Syria "a crossroad for terrorism." So, will anyone in that somnambulant White House press corps dare ask the president why he would turn over a prisoner to such a government? And an innocent one at that? Yes, innocent. On Monday, the Canadian justice who headed a 30-month investigation of this case concluded: "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." The judge employed characteristic Canadian restraint in concluding in his damning three-volume, 822-page report that "The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar's case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion. They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar's case in a less than forthcoming manner." To put it a bit more bluntly: U.S. officials lied to their Canadian counterparts and never revealed that Arar was "rendered" to Syria precisely to be tortured. In fact, the outsourcing of torture, as Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) exposes so brilliantly on his website, has been the official and all-too-common practice of this president since 9/11. Foreign nationals have been stolen off the streets of even close democratic allies of the United States and sent to be tortured by regimes otherwise branded as fascist by this president. Yet even the highly skilled and practiced torturers in Syria concluded that the Canadian engineer was totally innocent. Since no one in this administration has seen fit to apologize to Mr. Arar, or his government, are we to conclude that they feel the Syrian torturers failed to find evidence of guilt because they were too restrained in their techniques? We are not likely to find out if Congress and the media continue to ignore the frightening descent of this presidency into barbarism. The epic copout behind all this, of course, is that national security after 9/11 requires the shredding of America's reputation for treating liberty as sacred. The argument is that while errors may occur when you cast a wide net-the U.S. currently is holding, according to an Associated Press report last week, more than 14,000 uncharged foreign nationals in unregulated military prisons around the world-these horrendous tactics are needed to nab the truly bad actors. That, in effect, is the argument advanced by the president in his press conference last week defending the efficacy, indeed the necessity, of inhuman practices as proscribed in Article Three of the Geneva Convention. Burbling with his standard unwarranted optimism, Bush cited what he claimed to be the excellent results of the interrogation of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been held prisoner in secret locations for the past three years. But according to the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee, what has been learned from the interrogation of Khalid and other "key witnesses" is that there was nothing but enmity between bin Laden's gang and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Despite up to five years of torture, it seems that those key witnesses still did not tell the Bush administration what it wanted to hear. Perhaps they should have been rendered to some other nation with a richer tradition in such investigative techniques. *** Reuters - Sep 18, 2006 Israel Denies POW Status to Captured Fighters; Files criminal charges against Hizbollah men By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel prosecutors indicted three Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas on Monday on a raft of charges including helping carry out the deadly operation to snatch two soldiers that sparked a war with the Jewish state. The three men, all in their early 20s, are also charged with murder, attempted murder and belonging to a terrorist group. The trial opening in Nazareth District Court reflects Israel's refusal to recognize Hizbollah as a legitimate fighting force, despite the Shi'ite group's broadbased support in Lebanon and representation in the Beirut government and parliament. "The defendants are not prisoners of war," said Justice Ministry spokesman Bishara Farran. "Hizbollah acts deliberately against civilian targets, and from within civilian populations, something that is absolutely forbidden by the laws of war." Officials said the three -- Mahmoud Ali Suleiman, Mohammed Srur and Maher Qurani -- were captured in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces during the war, launched after Hizbollah seized the two soldiers and killed eight others in a July 12 ambush. All three were accused of having support roles in that raid. Srur and Qurani were charged with attempted murder. Suleiman was charged with murder for being assigned to provide covering fire, though the indictment said he did not actually shoot. Prosecutors said the guerrillas received weapons training in Iran, Israel's arch-foe and a Hizbollah patron, and that two of them were taken prisoner while preparing to attack the Israeli forces that swept through south Lebanon during the 34-day war. One of the two state-appointed lawyers representing the Hizbollah captives said they would probably contest the charges at a follow-up reading of the indictment slated for Oct 5. "Our clients do not deny being Hizbollah fighters," attorney Smadar Ben-Natan told Reuters. "Our position is that they have the status of prisoners of war, and as such should not be tried. They should be held until a prisoner exchange is worked out." PUBLIC RECKONING Trying the three in open criminal court rather than in a military tribunal may signal a desire by Israeli authorities for a public reckoning that could offset unhappiness in the Jewish state with the war's inconclusive end in an August 14 truce. While killing some 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, Israel's armed forces failed to crush Hizbollah or stop its cross-border rocket salvoes against northern Israeli communities. Israel lost 157 citizens, most of them soldiers. In past wars with Arab states, Israel held captured enemy troops until they could be swapped for its own prisoners. But like the United States, Israel considers Hizbollah -- which advocates the Jewish state's destruction -- a terrorist group. The European Union does not. Moshe Negby, legal analyst for Israel Radio, said the Justice Ministry had been compelled to prosecute the captives by precedents set after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. "If they hadn't been charged, it would have been difficult for Israel to detain them," he said. "The Supreme Court has ruled that detainees cannot be held as bargaining chips or as hostages for a prisoner exchange. It contradicts the laws governing human rights." Israeli political sources have predicted the release of Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the two soldiers held by Hizbollah. Even if convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, the three Hizbollah captives could expect to be included. (Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem) © Reuters 2006. 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