Supreme Court Rejects Case of Tortured Canadian

Ryan Singel
Threat Level, Wired.com
June 14, 2010

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the government by a Canadian citizen who, under suspicion of being connected to Al Qaeda, was sent by U.S. authorities to be tortured in Syria.

The rejection likely marks the end of Maher Arar’s chances of getting redress from the federal government for an egregious decision made by the Bush administration. The U.S. stonewalling of Arar’s search for justice has continued under the Obama administration, which argues that the doctrine of “State Secrets” precludes allowing any judge to review the materials that led John Ashcroft’s Justice Department to send Arar to Syria.

Arar was detained in the United States on a stopover at JFK on his way back to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis. After being held for 12 days, he was sent to Syria, the country of his birth, where he was imprisoned for almost a year. The Bush administration ignored his protests that he would be tortured there.

Arar was held in Syria for 10 and a half months in a cell measuring 3 feet by 6 feet by 7 feet, and was tortured with steel cables.

Upon his release, Arar sued Bush’s Justice Department, but his lawsuit was rejected by a succession of U.S. courts, in part out of deference to the executive branch’s claim that national security would be harmed by allowing a federal judge to review the relevant evidence. That’s a common legal maneuver that was used frequently by the Bush administration, and which Obama pledged to use less often. So far, those promises have been proven to be empty.

In contrast, Arar’s home country of Canada — which provided the United States with the bad intel that prompted the whole affair — investigated the case (.pdf), confirmed that Arar was tortured in Syria, took responsibility, apologized and paid Arar U.S. $10.2 million as recompense for his year of detention and torture at the hands of Syrian intelligence.

Arar and his family remain on a U.S. watch list, and the United States has never officially apologized or admitted it made a mistake.

Instead, Obama’s Justice Department told the Supreme Court that Arar’s case remained too secret for justice, and that the U.S. law offers no recourse for him.

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Supreme Court Rejects Case of Tortured Canadian

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