The U.S. Wins the Right to Abduct
Innocent People with Impunity
By Glenn Greenwal
July 15, 2010 "Salon" - June 14, 2010
-- The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review
from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by
the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning to
Canada in 2002, held incommunicado for two weeks, and then
rendered to Syria, where he spent the next 10 months being tortured,
even though -- as everyone acknowledges -- he was guilty of absolutely
nothing. Arar sued the U.S. Government for what was done to him, and
last November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal
of his lawsuit on the ground that courts have no right to interfere in
these decisions of the Executive Branch. That was the decision which
the U.S. Supreme Court let stand today, ending Arar's attempt to be
compensated for what was done to him.I've
written in detail several times about Arar's case, including in
November when the appellate court upheld dismissal of his lawsuit; see here for
how extreme his treatment has been
at the hands of the U.S. Government, which was most responsible for his
harrowing nightmare and then spent years fighting to deny him any
remedy for what was done. I won't reiterate those points here, as
everything I have to say about the Supreme Court's actions today was
said in that November post
(read the last part of that post, where I excerpted the court's
description of what was done to Arar). But I do want to highlight one
aspect of this episode:
Just
compare how the American and Canadian Governments responded to what
everyone agrees was this horrific injustice. The Canadians, who
cooperated with the U.S. in Arar's abduction, conducted a sweeping
investigation of what happened, and then publicly
"issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for
his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and
tortured," and made clear he had done absolutely nothing wrong. Then,
Canada's Prime Minister personally and publicly apologized to Arar, and
announced that Canada would compensate him with a payment of $ 8.5 million.
By stark contrast, the U.S. Government,
which played a far more active role in his abduction and rendition to Syria,
has never apologized to Arar (though individual members of Congress have). It
has never clearly acknowledged wrongdoing (the only time it even hinted at this
was when Condoleezza Rice called U.S. conduct in this case "imperfect" -- you
think? -- and generously added:
"We do not think this case was handled as it should have been"). In
fact, it continuously did the opposite of providing accountability: in
response to Arar's efforts to seek damages from the U.S. Government,
the U.S. raised -- under two successive administrations -- a slew of
technical arguments to persuade American courts not to hear his case at
all, including the argument that what was done to Arar involved "state
secrets" that prevented a judicial adjudication of his claims.
The U.S. even continued to ban Arar from entering the U.S.
long after it was acknowledged that he had done nothing wrong, thus
preventing him for years from appearing before Congress or in the U.S.
to talk about what was done to him. Indeed, after the Bush
administration spent years arguing that courts were barred from hearing
Arar's case on the ground of "state secrets," the Obama administration
embraced those same arguments and then urged the Supreme Court not to hear his
appeal.
As the Center for Constitutional Rights
pointed out today:
The
Obama administration could have settled the case, recognizing the
wrongs done to Mr. Arar as Canada has done. . . . Yet the Obama
administration chose to come to the defense of Bush administration
officials, arguing that even if they conspired to send Maher Arar to
torture, they should not be held accountable by the judiciary.
So
congratulations to the U.S. for winning the right to wrongfully abduct
people and send them to their torture with total impunity. What a
ringing statement about our country's willingness to right the wrongs
it commits and to provide access to our courts to those whose lives we
devastate with our behavior. Andrew Sullivan today referred
to "the cult of the inerrant leader": the inability and refusal of our
political class to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize for it, and be
held accountable. The Maher Arar case is a pathological illustration
of that syndrome.
Satrio Arismunandar
Executive ProducerNews Division, Trans TV, Lantai 3
Jl. Kapten P. Tendean Kav. 12 - 14 A, Jakarta 12790
Phone: 7917-7000, 7918-4544 ext. 3542, Fax: 79184558,
79184627 http://satrioarismunandar6.blogspot.comhttp://satrioarismunandar.multiply.com Verba
volant scripta manent...(yang terucap akan lenyap, yang tertulis akan abadi...)
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