REPORTER: Bronwyn Adcock
Canadian Maher Arar is an innocent man, yet based on unfounded suspicions, he was sent for 10 months of hell in a Syrian prison, where he was tortured
MAHER ARAR: Let me tell you something that happened during the interrogation, I urinated myself twice during the interrogation. I dont know what that shows but my nerves, like I cant control myself.
Its so scary when you hear people being tortured it is so scary when you are beaten. And I would just say anything, anything they want, just to stop the torture.
Maher Arar was sent to Syria by United States Government officials who believed he had information about terrorist suspects. Arars lawyers believe the US sent him for the purpose of interrogation under torture.
BILL GOODMAN, LAWYER, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: They wanted to torture him, but they didnt quite have the wherewithal, the guts, lets say. To do what they really intended to do, was torture this man, so they franchised the torture. They knew the Syrians wouldnt blink at torturing someone, and the purpose was supposedly, to get information from him, about his connections with Al Quida, which by the way are totally non existent.
Maher Arar, is not the only case of whats known as extraordinary rendition, a secretive US policy of out-sourcing torture to countries like Syria and Egypt, thats proving embarrassing and controversial for the US government. Arar was the first to sue the government over this practice, but last week, in a clear victory for the Bush Administration, his case was thrown out of court.
BILL GOODMAN: I think some of our clients are terrified of coming back to the United States.
Bill Goodman says this gives a green light for the government to continue with extraordinary rendition.
BILL GOODMAN: If they can get away with doing it to Maher Arar, they are going to get away with doing it to whoever they chose to do it to, whether he be a non-citizen or a citizen, in my humble opinion, or she. And that person who is sent to Syria today can be sent to the Sudan or Somalia tomorrow or who knows where the next day.
As we reported eighteen months ago, Maher Arars terrifying journey began in the summer of 2002 when he was detained while in transit at JFK airport in New York. He was held here in a Brooklyn detention centre for two weeks, with little access to a lawyer.
He was accused of being a member of Al- Quida and told he was to be deported
not to Canada but to Syria, the country of his birth.
MAHER ARAR: I told them, I said Listen your going to send me to a country that you know has no law, as they do not follow the law, and if you send me there I am going to be tortured. So I raised the torture issue many times.
Despite his pleas and with no legal extradition process, Arar was put on board a Gulfstream jet. It is now known that these planes have been widely used in Americas rendition program, taking detainees everywhere from eastern Europe to the Middle East.
Once in Syria, Maher Arars worst fears were realised.
MAHER ARAR: They would basically put me back in the interrogation room and they would beat me again like three or four times with the cable. And now they started beating me on my shoulder, on my back, on my hips mostly. They would ask questions again, sometimes they would beat first and ask second.
Arar said in Syria he was asked identical questions to those asked when he was detained in the US, leading him to believe that his Syrian interrogators were acting on behalf of the United States.
MAHER ARAR: And I asked the colonel actually, I said you know I dont have anything to do with these allegations the Americans have against me, why dont you release me? He said You are going home very soon.
Now whether I should believe them or not because they lied to me all the time right, but I could tell in their eyes that they had no interest in me.
Syrian officials have since confirmed that they only took Arar because the Americans requested it.
Maher Arar was released home to Canada after 10 months, time spent in a coffin-sized cell, in solitary confinement. He has never been charged with anything.
Dateline caught up with Maher Arar again this week, after he had received the news about the courts decision.
MAHER ARAR: When a human being is wronged, the first place he would expect to go is the justice system, and in my case that is what I exactly did. I filed the law suit 2 years ago, I wanted to hold the people accountable, and all of a sudden the judge is saying good luck. That is what is scary about this.
In his court case against the US government, Arar asked for compensation and a statement that what happened to him was unlawful. Last week the case was dismissed, largely because of national security and foreign policy considerations.
The judge said that he couldnt declare that what happened to Arar was illegal because it could threaten the security of America.
VOICE OVER: A judge who declares on his or her own Article 111 authority, that the policy of extraordinary rendition is under all circumstances unconstitutional, must acknowledge that such a ruling can have the most serious of consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both.
The judge said that such decisions are for the government, not the judiciary.
VOICE OVER: The task of balancing individual rights against national-security concerns is one the courts should not undertake without the guidance or the authority of the coordinate branches, in whom the Constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate.
Arars lawyers are shocked by the Judgement. Bill Goodman says judicial oversight of government is an essential part of democracy.
BILL GOODMAN: This is a principal that goes all the way back to the Magna Carta, to at least 1215, to the 13th century and probably well beyond. But if the courts cannot get involved and cannot demand answers from the executive branch and cannot tell the executive branch that it cannot abuse its power, then nobody can. And we are setting ourselves up for an executive branch which will, which is prepared to, will likely and undoubtedly in my opinion, will abuse its power.
Bill Goodman agrees its important to consider national security but not at any cost.
BILL GOODMAN: I think they have to be taken into consideration in determining whether or not, what the government has done is reasonable. But I do not think they are a trump card that can be played and as a result no court can get involved in deciding whether or not some ones rights have been violated. That would be a violation of the most basic and fundamental democratic principles of the American Constitution.
This is clearly not the view if the judge though, who went as far as saying that the Judiciary does not have the right to hold the government to account over policies like rendition.. even if the law is broken.
VOICE OVER: Judges should not in the absence of explicit direction by Congress, hold officials who carry out such policies liable for damages even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.
The Arar judgement is clearly written in the context of America being in the middle of a so called War on Terror. It frequently cites the importance of national security. Arars lawyers say this has led to the Judge to act in fear.
BILL GOODMAN: Fear of terror, fear there will be another terrorist attack and if there is that these opinions, that the judges will be blamed, because they let the terrorists get away with it, because they tied the hands of government in fighting the war on terror, which of course just isnt, this is demanding of the government that it do what the constitution compels it to.
For Maher Arar, whose only connection with terrorists is that he was mistaken for one, it is a devastating blow.
MAHER ARAR: You have to understand the context in which all this happened, I was a successful engineer before, I was living a normal life, I had everything I wanted. And all of a sudden I am put out of a job, I still have scars, mostly psychological scars, and I still have nightmares, I am still with suffering from psychological affects and financially it is a very, very bad situation.
And that is what is disappointing about all this, not only its giving the Bush administration the green light to continue their evil practice but also it is very destructive for me on a personal level.