Court Weighs 'Extraordinary Rendition' Case

[struggle4progress]

Source: NPR

by Dina Temple-Raston

All Things Considered, December 9, 2008 · A federal appeals court in New York heard arguments Tuesday in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was flown from the U.S. to Syria for interrogation in a case of "extraordinary rendition."

Arar wants to sue the U.S. government for violating his constitutional right to due process — something he has not been permitted to do thus far because the Bush administration has said to do so would imperil national security.

The facts of the case are not in dispute. In 2002, U.S. authorities detained Arar at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. He was suspected of terrorism ties and was sent to Syria for interrogation. Arar spent 10 months there in a cell he called the "grave." He says he was tortured.

Eventually, Arar was allowed to return to Canada and a Canadian commission cleared him of all charges. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has even said mistakes were made in Arar's case ...

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98046319

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Appeals court questions U.S. claims about Arar
Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, December 09, 2008

NEW YORK - Judges at a U.S. appeals court turned the heat up on the federal government attorney Tuesday as they began rehearing arguments in the lawsuit Maher Arar launched over his 2002 deportation to Syria.

One questioned whether the U.S. government had been trying to eclipse the courts by seeking to have the case dismissed as an immigration matter amid claims national security issues were at stake.

"Where the government can allege foreign policy concerns and terrorism concerns, what role is there for judges? Or is this the third rail of the new environment in which judges are cut out of the separation of powers?" Judge Rosemary Pooler said as a lawyer for former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, argued the government's side.


Other judges challenged some of the secrecy that has surrounded the case, while one suggested Arar's deportation will come back to haunt the U.S. by effectively inviting other governments to take similar action against U.S. citizen ... http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=1054243

Canadian tortured in Syria victim of US conspiracy: lawyer
8 hours ago

NEW YORK (AFP) — A Canadian man wrongly accused of terrorism and sent to be tortured in Syria was the victim of a high level US conspiracy, his lawyer told a court in New York.

The full 12-judge panel of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals heard Maher Arar's lawyer outline accusations that top officials were behind the 2002 deportation of the Syrian-born Canadian software engineer.

"There was an intentional conspiracy to subject (Arar) to torture and there was an intentional conspiracy to keep him from having access to the courts," attorney David Cole said ...

.. government lawyer Jonathan Cohn .... asked the court not to rule on Arar and instead allow Congress to devise legislation dealing with such unusual circumstances ... http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hhygq0GLVqIeobn4FnQlnGRYOWGw

NY appeals court not so sure on torture case
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press
2008-12-10 11:51 AM

... Arar sued the U.S. government and top Justice Department officials including the attorney general and FBI director, but the lawsuit was tossed out by a lower court in a ruling that was upheld earlier this year by a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an unusual twist, the entire 12-justice circuit court decided on its own to reconsider the case brought by the Ottawa resident. The hearing lasted nearly three hours Tuesday, with several hundred spectators under heavy security in the courthouse's largest courtroom. The court did not immediately rule ...

"The Supreme Court has admonished time and time again that courts have to exercise caution before stepping in," <Cohn> said. "This court should simply wait for Congress to act. What this case is about is separation of powers, your honor" ...

"So the minute the executive raises the specter of foreign policy, national security, it is the government's position that that is a license to torture anyone, a U.S. citizen or foreign citizen, license meaning that you can do so without any financial consequence? Is that your position?" <Judge Sonia Sotomayer> asked ... http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=808315&lang=eng_news

Appeals Court Hears Case of Canadian Citizen Sent by U.S. to Syria
By BENJAMIN WEISER
Published: December 9, 2008

Even if the government agreed with a Canadian citizen’s claims that American officials sent him to Syria in 2002 to be tortured, he should not be allowed to sue for damages because there was no Constitutional violation and Congress has not authorized such lawsuits, a Justice Department lawyer argued on Tuesday before a federal appeals court in Manhattan ...

Mr. Arar’s lawyer, David D. Cole, argued that American officials had not only sent Mr. Arar to Syria to be tortured in order to make him talk, but that before doing so, while he was detained here, they kept him from seeking help in the legal system.

“Having successfully kept Mr. Arar out of court while they had him in their custody,” Mr. Cole said, “defendants now ask this court to deny any claim for relief because he did not pursue the very avenues of judicial redress that they blocked him from pursuing. That Catch-22 can not be, and is not, the law.”

Mr. Cole argued on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been representing Mr. Arar. He said that to dismiss the suit “would be to reward obstruction of justice and to deny protection of the most fundamental human right, the right not to be tortured” ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/nyregion/10arar.html?ref=nyregion

THE ARAR CASE
Conspiracy against Arar reached to highest levels, U.S. court told
SINCLAIR STEWART AND COLIN FREEZE
December 10, 2008

NEW YORK, TORONTO -- U.S. officials assured lawyers for Maher Arar in 2002 that their client was safely detained in a New Jersey holding cell, even though the government was about to put him, in the middle of the night, on a CIA plane bound for the Middle East, a U.S. appellate court was told yesterday ...

U.S. officials intentionally attempted to keep Mr. Arar from the courts by scheduling a lengthy removal interview at 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening in October, Mr. Cole said. He said officials made only the most perfunctory attempt to contact a defence lawyer.

The next day, as Mr. Arar's former lawyer tried to contact him, she was told - falsely - that he had been brought to a New Jersey jail, when he remained in a Brooklyn detention centre. Later that week, Mr. Arar was flown to the Middle East, where he spent most of the next year jailed in his homeland, Syria. He has since recounted how he was kept in a grave-sized cell and beaten with electric cables during the initial phases of his captivity.

Canadian judges have vindicated Mr. Arar, finding the Mounties wrongly broadcast suspicions about him and others ... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081210.ARAR10/TPStory/International

U.S. appeals court reconsiders Arar suit against Bush officials
Latest chapter in bid by Canadian to hold those who sent him to Syria for torture accountable
Dec 10, 2008 04:30 AM
Isabel Teotonio
Staff Reporter

... Arar, who was unable to attend the proceedings because he remains on a no-fly list, urged the judges not to "fall in the government's trap of portraying my case as simply an immigration matter."

The judges told the packed courtroom they would reserve their decision, which is expected in 2009.

Earlier in the day, many of Arar's supporters organized a rally outside the Foley Square courthouse, where they tried to raise awareness about extraordinary rendition – the outsourcing of interrogations to governments known to use torture – and the Bush administration's "war on terror."

"Maher Arar puts a human face on this disastrous policy," said Matthew Daloisio, as a crowd of about 50 people gathered, many of them waving signs and chanting "No to a torture state" ... http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/551279

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[truthisfreedom]

2. Fucking crazy-ass shit, if you ask me.

Never thought I'd live to see the day.

[struggle4progress]

3. Does the U.S. Owe Torture Victims? (Washington Independent)

Second Circuit Hears Argument on Whether Government Should Pay Damages
By Daphne Eviatar 12/10/08 4:57 PM

Georgetown University law professor David Cole, on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar, ... told the judges: “I don’t see any reasonable argument that a federal official can torture somebody or outsource that torture to somebody else” ...

“This is about separation of powers,” contended <Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Jonathan Cohn, who is representing former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other federal officials and agencies>, insisting that there is no precedent for allowing a non-citizen deported by the immigration service to sue the United States for damages. That he was deported in secret, was not intending to immigrate to the United States and was intentionally sent to a country where he would likely be tortured should make no difference, Cohn told the appeals court.

That argument seemed to outrage Judge Guido Calabresi. He said that if he were changing planes in France and was picked up by the French authorities and whisked away to Syria where he faced the likelihood of being tortured for some alleged crime, he sure would hope the U.S. would have a problem with it. “You might have a very strong interest in creating an action in this country to prevent other countries from doing that,” he told Cohn ...

Cohn’s other main argument .. that the Arar case is too intertwined with national security and foreign policy, the prerogatives of the president, for the appeals court to get involved .... didn’t sit well with Judge Barrington Parker, among others. “We look at matters that raise national security and foreign policy issues all the time,” he said, noting that the court frequently reviews petitions for political asylum and petitions for relief under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which is supposed to prevent deportation to a country where someone has a reasonable belief they will be tortured. In such cases, “We’re always making comments in the international arena about international affairs” ...

http://washingtonindependent.com/21597/court-reveals-array-of-opinions-on-damages-for-extraordinary-rendition