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Congress apologizes for rendition and torture of innocent man

rawstory.com — Members of a Congressional committee have issued an apology to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was wrongly detained at JFK Airport in 2002 as a suspected terrorist and subjected to extraordinary rendition to Syria, where he was tortured into making a false confession.

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  • plaxx, on 10/25/2007, -5/+51"oh, btw we're sorry about all that..."

    ridiculous. they should be sent to syria now.
    • pukufek, on 10/25/2007, -6/+7They should be taken outside and shot in the back of the head, ***** traitors to the constitution.
    • Scruffydan, on 10/25/2007, -0/+18it should be noted that this isn't an official US apology, it is just some members of congress who are disgusted by this whole situation and apologizing. The US government has not apologized.
  • Bossy, on 10/25/2007, -3/+63President Bush: "this government does not torture people . . . we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations."

    Words fail me, he ought to be the worst of the worst president.
    • h4mx0r, on 10/25/2007, -2/+15Just one more piece of ***** streaming from the horse's mouth. Well, the next president better damn well be better...
      • DrSpud, on 10/25/2007, -1/+5Especially with all the expansions of power of the executive branch Bush has put into place. Our next president most certainly needs to be one who would never abuse that extra power - and understand their role and the checks and balances that our founders put into place.
        • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -0/+11None of the double-digit candidates fit that description. We're screwed.
    • ahoy, on 10/25/2007, -0/+16and if we dont torture... syria does it for us
    • pukufek, on 10/25/2007, -4/+6Bush needs to be shot, someone just needs to do it right now quick and painless.
      • ProgressBar, on 10/25/2007, -3/+4Make sure it's a magic bullet and finds Cheney too!
      • elnerdo, on 10/28/2007, -4/+7Just Bush? Our entire government is an infinitely corrupt political machine.

        Besides, it's not Bush's fault or Congress's fault that people are stupid enough to vote for them. The real people who should be shot are all the stupid-as-hell voters.
        • SPECOPS, on 10/28/2007, -0/+4don't forget the corrupt voting system(s), which still aren't fixed,and probably won't be fixed before election 2008
        • chase001, on 10/25/2007, -0/+2They are stupid by design. The right wing lobbied to remove civics form schools because they said knowing about your government was socialist.
      • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -1/+3Hear the doorbell? That's the secret service wanting to have a word with you. Let us know when you get back from Syria.
        • williamdyer, on 10/25/2007, -0/+1Too many people are expressing that sentiment for that to happen.
      • iainc, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3Being shot is too good.

        You lot need to use your 2nd Amendment rights now, storm the Capitol and dangle every one of those right-wing douchebags from a rope, leaving their stinking carcasses to the crows. Then, maybe, you can help appoint a government for the people by the people.
      • chase001, on 10/28/2007, -0/+3Our founding fathers made sure there was a legal was to remove a Lawless Executive from office. Don't make crazy threats just make sure everyone you know is pushing Congress for Impeachment.
  • FreepersRule, on 10/25/2007, -52/+2Leftist traitors need to be rounded up and imprisoned. We have many here in the USA
    • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -4/+26You ***** nazis deserve to be shot on sight.
    • MasterThief117, on 10/25/2007, -2/+15And how are we traitors? We are just ***** pissed off how an innocent man was brutally tortured for over a year, and then when OUR government, The United States of America's government, found out that this guy was innocent, all they could say was, "whoops, my bad"
      You sir are the traitor. You wish the death of thousands, even millions of innocent civilians. You sir are the scum of this planet.
    • mille716, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3Trollers need to be rounded up and shot on sight. We have many of them on Digg.
  • ButterBuddha, on 10/25/2007, -1/+34Congress didn't apologize for this, a "Congressional Subcommittee" did....
  • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -1/+41So the guy's been cleared of terrorism connections, but he's still on the no-fly list? We need to get rid of the racist bumpkins that are running things.
    • jftitan, on 10/25/2007, -1/+9No, because, now that he is back, and has been tortured, they feel that he might possibly have become a terrorist from their own actions. He may get on a plane and hijack it. Thats the current administration policy. "Oooops, we sent another innocent man to torture." "Well be better keep them there, who knows. if we let them go, they might have negative feelings towards us and actually terroize us.... HAHAHAHAHA yeah whatever, we control the government, and we make the rules." -Bush Admin.
    • Konrad9, on 10/25/2007, -6/+2Racist? Are you kidding?
      The no-fly list is completely random 90% of the time and THAT'S the problem.
      I'll get dugg down for this but whatever.
      It *should* profile people. My professors son flew out to Seattle from CT so he could pick up a small single engine plane and fly it back to CT. So he brought survival gear. Knives, two legal guns, food, and things you'd need to survive in the wild if, oh, your plane crashed. He also needed flight manuals for the plane. Would that look suspicious to ANYONE getting on a plane today? Did he get stopped? No.
      But my grandmother had to take off her shoes. My 85 year old grandmother who you could probably snap in half if you gave her a Green Bay Packer's cheese hat.
      • murmandamos, on 10/25/2007, -3/+2Old people are almost dead so they have nothing to lose. Plus they are senile. Now I'm not saying your grandmother is a terrorist, but I am saying she might have bombs in her shoes and destroy a plane for the Crusade.
      • cranium, on 11/04/2007, -0/+8Hey ignoramus, he's been cleared of terrorist connections. So why is he still on the list? Because he's an Arab. Yes, it's ***** racist and no, I'm not kidding.
      • niczar, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3It's unfortunately not random -- they've put whistleblowers who criticized didgy gov't policies on it.
    • SeekerDarksteel, on 10/21/2007, -0/+3The problem with profiling is that all you would have to do, if you were an international terrorist organization, is keep sending your people on flights, doing absolutely nothing wrong, until you find one or a few people who can make it through more or less undetected.
  • redmonkey, on 10/22/2007, -16/+3Why nobody blames Syria for torture? Where is outcry?
    • Acewrap, on 10/22/2007, -1/+10We need to clean up our own messes before we can complain about others. It's called "The Moral High Ground." The US has lost it. We need to find it again.
    • cranium, on 10/21/2007, -1/+6Yeah, it's all Syria's fault that we picked up an innocent guy and sent him there so they could do our torturing for us. We're just a pawn!
    • Putts335, on 10/21/2007, -2/+4That logic leads us down a very bad road. How about we try and be better than that?
    • redmonkey, on 10/21/2007, -7/+2My question was not about us. My point is that most of people on Digg use this case to blame Bush and government and don't really care about this poor guy. He was torture in Syria and democrat speaker of Congress praised Syrian dictator who is directly responsible for it.
      • pukufek, on 10/25/2007, -1/+4I agree its sad but the fact is, we dont hold Syria to ANY kind of standard because we know they are a bunch of ***** savages already. The American government is at the very least supposed to be semi-civilised.

        The same goes for Saudi Arabia, they are committing the absolute worst atrocities, they are banning Jewish people like Hitler and they're regularly stoning people to death in the street for adultery, homosexuality, blasphemy etc. savagely hacking peoples arms and legs off and sadistically flogging people - even rape victims - until they collapse.

        I don't even consider the Saudi Arabian government to be people any more, they need to be eradicated off the face of the earth as far as I am concerned - so its understandable when no-one complains when Saudi or Syria do things like this. Its kinda like no-one would bat an eyelid when Hitler gassed the 6 millionth Jew, it would be "old news".
        • williamdyer, on 10/25/2007, -0/+1It's worse than that: Syria is playing a double game. Sure, they'll beat up some poor chump we send them. Why not? Bush's utterly idiotic handling of the war makes us a mark for every two-bit dictator our there.
      • chicofaraby, on 10/25/2007, -0/+6"My point is that most of people on Digg use this case to blame Bush "

        Yes. Because it is George Bush's fault.

        ***** duh.
      • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -0/+3Why do you keep trying to shift the blame to Syria? We the people have the perfect right to hold our own government accountable for the illegal and/or immoral ***** that they do. We have no such right towards the Syrian government, we don't live there. They're going to run their country whichever way they want to, and what a lot of you knot-heads are having so much trouble grasping is that we're not in a position to demand that they do things our way.

        So basically, your own government has culpability for the torture of an innocent man, and you're defending them from it. Torture is wrong, and you're wrong for defending it, and your little tu quoque logical fallacy isn't fooling anyone.
        • redmonkey, on 10/25/2007, -4/+1I am not defending physical torture. I am not defending goverment in this case. I am trying to show double standard most of digg users.
          • Acewrap, on 10/21/2007, -0/+1Because that will solve what problem?
    • arjie, on 10/25/2007, -0/+5So you threw him in the snake pit and want to blame the snakes? Very good.
    • arjie, on 10/25/2007, -1/+3So you threw him in the snake pit and want to blame the snakes? Very good.
      • redmonkey, on 10/25/2007, -6/+1You are compared Arabs with snake. Sound as racism to me
  • TwiStEr55, on 10/21/2007, -2/+12Things like this are happening ... but you are still the role model for democracy right? You are the one "spreading" it around the world! Ever think about what these kinda actions look like to the rest of the world? Everybody is equal to the law except when the president says so .. or we dont torture because torture has been redefined in our laws .. come on ... I know many of you are just as fed up ... do something !!!!
    • purplelantern, on 10/21/2007, -7/+3The first thing to do is probably to read up on the case and don't just bash because that is the fad.
      US didn't do anything wrong. They were acting on Canadian information. Canadian immigration told the US authority, erroneously, that Arar was no longer a Canadian resident . *** Canada won't take him ***. So he was deported to his other country of citizenship - Syria. Canadian government was informed of the rendition. Canadian government should apologize (and they did), not the US. Besides Mr. Arar was paid over 10 million for his trobule.
      • chicofaraby, on 10/25/2007, -0/+10"US didn't do anything wrong."

        Do you mean other than having an innocent man tortured?
        • purplelantern, on 10/25/2007, -7/+1Arar claimed that Syrian authority tortured him. Not the US.
          • chicofaraby, on 10/25/2007, -0/+8Yeah and Hitler didn't kill a single Jew. Other Nazi's did.
          • purplelantern, on 10/25/2007, -2/+2I am sorry. Are you arguing with Arar who tortured him?
            Are you saying Syria, one of the biggest military power in the region, host country of the Brotherhood of Islam where they launched rockets into Israel this summer, works for the US?
      • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -0/+5Why is he still banned from flying in the US then? Are you saying that's not wrong?
        • purplelantern, on 10/25/2007, -4/+1You realize he is not a US citizen right? He has no natural right to be in the US.
          • cranium, on 10/25/2007, -0/+2Do you even understand how international travel works? You don't need a US visa to have a layover in the US, yet this guy can't even do that.

            WHY???
          • purplelantern, on 10/25/2007, -1/+1It appears that you are the one who don't understand. Whether you need a visa for layover is the sole discretion of the host country. There is no law that said you must be allowed layoever on US soil. The Taiwanese president's plane wasn't even allow to travel over US air space, much less layover.
          • damage78, on 10/21/2007, -0/+0The US requires at the very least a transit visa for layovers from most countries.
  • martynda, on 10/21/2007, -4/+3Inquisition ver2.0?
  • AwakeningAZ, on 10/22/2007, -1/+7They should totally make a movie out of this.
    • blackjack75, on 10/22/2007, -0/+1And call it "24, every single day".
  • Frnnkdlxx, on 10/22/2007, -0/+19Shouldn't the Executive Branch be apologizing and be punished for this, and not the legislative?

    Or am I missing something. These people need to simply do their jobs. Jesus.
    • cranium, on 10/21/2007, -2/+3Both, really. Hell, so should the american people. I'll start.

      To the world: I humbly apologize for the war crimes and other atrocities committed by the US government and its associated criminal elements including Blackwater. I promise to work very actively against the future election of any person of low character as to be comparable with George W. Bush to any office of public trust in the US.
      • Frnnkdlxx, on 10/21/2007, -0/+1Hey now! Don't apologize to the world. They're doing this to US. In the aggregate, its not the downtrodden and innocent citizens of the world whose heads are on the chopping block. It's ours! That's why this is so important. We have a criminal gov't that HAS to be stopped from enslaving its people.
  • terminalpariah, on 10/22/2007, -0/+12The Canadian gov't gave him $10.5 million in their settlement. Best of luck to him in his case against the US gov't.
    • ProgressBar, on 10/23/2007, -0/+8He'll get a Halliburton t-shirt and free 'fight terrorism' license plates for a year :P
      • AROZ, on 10/23/2007, -0/+4The t-shirt probably won't even be his size.
      • HueytheFreeman, on 10/22/2007, -1/+2And the license plate will say t3rr0r.
    • sik0fewl, on 10/28/2007, -0/+3"I was extraordinarily rendered to Syria and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
  • BlacklabelSAR, on 10/28/2007, -2/+4Keep in mind that collusion between Corporations, the Federal Reserve, a large dose of Christian Fundamentalism, and the US Government has made this possible. Now the NeoCons are losing their Christian base, and more and more people are becoming aware of the War On Terror farce.
  • Soofi, on 10/22/2007, -4/+4The man is entitled to justice, or at the very least a generous monetary compensation - what makes this story troubling is that even with the admission of the mistake, according to the article Bush is working to dismiss the lawsuit against the US government.

    There is a time and a place for turning the other cheek, and there is a time and a place for the law of equality in 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'. In the face of such arrogance, the latter becomes more fitting.

    Regardless, men may escape the punishments of the human courts, but nobody escapes the Divine Law.
    • PepeGSay, on 10/21/2007, -8/+1I think the sticking point is that he was held and sent to Syria at the behest of the Canadian government, not the US government.
  • SwordOfShannara, on 10/28/2007, -10/+2Did they compensate him in anyway? I mean- some people sue for millions from a burn from coffee- shouldn't he get a few million for what he had to put up with? ( Also go to http://www.ThisNovember5th.com and pledge your donation to Ron Paul. )
  • fixedcoma, on 10/22/2007, -3/+3We are so good at lovely attacks against humanity, aren't we???
  • skews13, on 10/21/2007, -1/+2here's the administrations chance to lend credibility to the war on terrorism,and regain some respectability around the world.i wonder if he's smart enough to recognize this?
  • pukufek, on 10/22/2007, -3/+17WHAT THE *****!?

    A man is sent to Syria to be tortured and they are only sorry that he was an innocent man?
    I want to see who ever was responsible for sending people - any people - to Syria for torture SHOT IN THE ***** HEAD
  • ubergeek09, on 10/21/2007, -2/+0At least they admitted they were wrong and apologized.. Although I believe they should have done more to compensate the man for the wrong they did to him, at least they didn't deny their wrongdoing.
  • ProgressBar, on 10/22/2007, -2/+4Were I this man, I would settle for no less than the beheading of the waste of flesh that sent me to Syria. Oh and it better be on YouTube.
  • r00tus3r, on 10/22/2007, -0/+8I think this is one of those times when "sorry" just doesn't cut it.
    • GRTWHT, on 10/22/2007, -0/+1True, but it's a (very, very) small step in the right direction - the first as far as I know.
  • gothicform, on 10/22/2007, -0/+8But everyone knows the United States doesn't torture. This is because the American definition of torture states it must cause the risk of major organ failure or death... things that are not torture include electric shocks, pulling out teeth and fingernails, rape and sexual assault, suffocation, waterboarding, and burning people with cigarette ends.
    If they do want to risk torturing someone to death then they hand them over to the Syrians like here. It's SO important the United States maintains the moral high ground in this matter ;)
    • cranium, on 10/28/2007, -0/+7Waterboarding does risk suffocation and death.

      No matter though, it's all torture, and Bush and his supporters are the biggest assholes since WWII.
    • HappyScrappy, on 10/21/2007, -0/+1Actually, I think the US definition includes other permanent damage as torture.

      But it doesn't really matter, the government is lying anyway. It doesn't matter how you define it, they'll do it anyway and then claim executive privilege to cover it up.
  • MacintoshSauce, on 10/21/2007, -0/+2Holy crap! Congress actually apologised to a Canadian citizen? The world is looking a little better today IMO. Now, Congress needs to pony up some serious cash to Mr. Arar for what they put him through. Some of you don't think he deserves it? How would you like to be sent to Syria and then tortured and also be forced to confess to something you never did? If I was Mr. Arar, I would take the US Government to a US court and sue their asses off. He deserves a hell of a lot of compensation...
    • swrostmore, on 10/21/2007, -0/+2Members of a Congressional committee apologized. Theres been no official apology, least of all from the folks who were actually responsible.
  • NatrlSelection, on 10/28/2007, -1/+6This government is a joke
  • HappyScrappy, on 10/22/2007, -4/+5Arar is a Syrian-Canadian dual citizen. Deporting someone to a country they are of a citizen of is not extraordinary rendition, it's normal deportation.

    Saying this is extraordinary rendition only serves to understate how terrible extraordinary rendition is. In extraordinary rendition, the US kidnapped people (many from outside the US) and sent them off to designated, illegal camps in countries they had never been to before and continued to hold them illegally in CIA-run facilities.
    • swrostmore, on 10/22/2007, -0/+8He was a Canadian citizen and had been living in Canada for decades. He maintained a residence in Ottawa, Ontario, as well as one in Framingham, Massachusetts.There was no reason for his rendition to Syria other than the fact that if he had been deported to Canada he would have been immediately released.
      • HappyScrappy, on 10/22/2007, -3/+2He is a Syrian and Canadian citizen. Yes, he had been living in Canada for decades, but when you are deported, you generally don't get to choose where you go, you are deported to your home country. Syria is one of his home countries. If didn't feel comfortable in Syria, he should have renounced his citizenship.

        The State Department has warned about the implications of being a citizen in a country you are not familiar with for over 10 years (ever since they dropped opposition to dual citizenship). They point out that if you are a citizen of a country, you are not afford protections in that country if you are arrested, like the right to speak with the consulate. It is foolish to maintain citizenship in a country you would not be comfortable living in, you're putting yourself in danger, as Arar's situation points out.

        I do agree the US Government deported him to Syria instead of Canada to make things harder on Mr. Arar. But the whole difference between this deportation and extraordinary rendition is that the rest of us don't have to be worried about being deported to Syria, because we aren't Syrian citizens. Whereas with extraordinary rendition, any of us could be kidnapped and never seen from again, like in Argentina in the 80s.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappear
      • evilbob333, on 10/21/2007, -0/+1The US Government actually attempted to deport him to Canada first. The Canadians, because of bad intel on their part refused. Then he got deported to Syria.
  • Damian91, on 10/28/2007, -2/+2We, Americans, are so controlled now -_-
  • murf43143, on 10/22/2007, -1/+1Sigh,
  • BadMonkeh, on 10/22/2007, -1/+0How can American's possibly justify shipping a traveller off to a forgeign country to torture them into a confession? Aren't they supposed to be against terrorism? Isn't this just the sort of thing a so called "terrorist" state would do?
  • remygs, on 10/22/2007, -0/+1All the white house's lies... God I'm happy to live in Canada, even if we ain't faring much better about assholes running the country...
  • dkern, on 10/22/2007, -0/+1I would face serious consequences if I did this to another person- why doesn't congress- what makes them so special?
    • dysfunction, on 10/22/2007, -0/+1dkern, I agree with you on the principle, but that's a terrible argument. The government can also imprison a person for years for committing a crime, no one argues the legality of that, but you certainly cannot imprison a person yourself. Just because a citizen cannot do something does not mean the government is barred from it.
      I certainly agree that the government should not be using these 'interrogation methods', but there are far sounder arguments for why.
  •  

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