[news] Fw: [R-G] The CIA and CIA "extraordinary renditions"

[Paul Browning]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <shniad at sfu.ca>
To: <shniad at sfu.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 11:14 PM
Subject: [R-G] The CIA and CIA "extraordinary renditions"


> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A522-2003Nov4.html
>
> Washington Post      November 5, 2003; Page A01
>
> Deported terror suspect details torture in Syria
>
> Canadian's case called typical of CIA
>
> By DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Priest
>
> Toronto -- A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F.
Kennedy
> International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he
> was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a
Syrian
> prison.
>
> Maher Arar, 33, who was released last month, said at a news conference in
> Ottawa that he pleaded with U.S. authorities to let him continue on to
> Canada, where he has lived for 15 years and has a family. But instead, he
> was flown under U.S. guard to Jordan and handed over to Syria, where he
was
> born. Arar denied any connection to terrorism and said he would fight to
> clear his name.
>
> U.S. officials said Tuesday that Arar was deported because he had been put
> on a terrorist watch list after information from "multiple international
> intelligence agencies" linked him to terrorist groups.
>
> Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Arar case
fits
> the profile of a covert CIA "extraordinary rendition" -- the practice of
> turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence
> services, some of which are known to torture prisoners.
>
> Arar's case has brought repeated apologies from the Canadian government,
> which says it is investigating what information the Royal Canadian Mounted
> Police gave to U.S. authorities. Canada's foreign minister, Bill Graham,
> also said he would question the Syrian ambassador about Arar's statements
> about torture. In an interview on CBC Radio, Imad Moustafa, the Syrian
> chargé d'affaires in Washington, denied that Arar had been tortured.
>
> Arar said U.S. officials apparently based the terrorism accusation on his
> connection to Abdullah Almalki, another Syrian-born Canadian. Almalki is
> being detained by Syrian authorities, although no charges against him have
> been reported. Arar said he knew Almalki only casually before his
detention
> but encountered him at the Syrian prison where both were tortured.
>
> Arar, whose case has become a cause celebre in Canada, demanded a public
> inquiry. "I am not a terrorist," he said. "I am not a member of al Qaeda.
I
> have never been to Afghanistan."
>
> He said he was flying home to Montreal via New York on Sept. 26, 2002,
from
> a family visit to Tunisia.
>
> "This is when my nightmare began," he said. "I was pulled aside by
> immigration and taken [away]. The police came and searched my bags. I
asked
> to make a phone call and they would not let me." He said an FBI agent and
a
> New York City police officer questioned him. "I was so scared," he said.
> "They told me I had no right to a lawyer because I was not an American
> citizen."
>
> Arar said he was shackled, placed on a small jet and flown to Washington,
> where "a new team of people got on the plane" and took him to Amman, the
> capital of Jordan. Arar said U.S. officials handed him over to Jordanian
> authorities, who "blindfolded and chained me and put me in a van. . . .
They
> made me bend my head down in the back seat. Then these men started beating
> me. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me."
>
> Hours later, he said, he was taken to Syria and there he was forced to
write
> that he had been to a training camp in Afghanistan. "They kept beating me,
> and I had to falsely confess," he said. "I was willing to confess to
> anything to stop the torture."
>
> Arar said his prison cell "was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had
no
> light, it was three feet wide, it was six feet deep, it was seven feet
high.
> . . . It had a metal door. There was a small opening in the ceiling. There
> were cats and rats up there, and from time to time, the cats peed through
> the opening into the cell."
>
> Steven Watt, a human rights fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights
> in Washington, said Arar's case raised questions about U.S.
counterterrorism
> measures. "Here we have the United States involved in the removal of
> somebody to a country where it knows persons in custody of security agents
> are tortured," Watt said. "The U.S. was possibly benefiting from the
fruits
> of that torture. I ask the question: Why wasn't he removed to Canada?"
>
> A senior U.S. intelligence official discussed the case in terms of the
> secret rendition policy. There have been "a lot of rendition activities"
> since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the
> official said. "We are doing a number of them, and they have been very
> productive."
>
> Renditions are a legitimate option for dealing with suspected terrorists,
> intelligence officials argue. The U.S. government officially rejects the
> assertion that it knowingly sends suspects abroad to be tortured, but
> officials admit they sometimes do that. "The temptation is to have these
> folks in other hands because they have different standards," one official
> said. "Someone might be able to get information we can't from detainees,"
> said another.
>
> Syria, where use of torture during imprisonment has been documented by the
> State Department, maintains a secret but growing intelligence relationship
> with the CIA, according to intelligence experts.
>
> "The Syrian government has provided some very useful assistance on al
Qaeda
> in the past," said Cofer Black, former director of counterterrorism at the
> CIA who is now the counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department.
>
> One senior intelligence official said Tuesday that Arar is still believed
to
> have connections to al Qaeda. The Justice Department did not have enough
> evidence to detain him when he landed in the United States, the official
> said, and "the CIA doesn't keep people in this country."
>
> With those limitations, and with a secret presidential "finding"
authorizing
> the CIA to place suspects in foreign hands without due process, Arar may
> have been one of the people whisked overseas by the CIA.
>
> In the early 1990s, renditions were exclusively law enforcement operations
> in which suspects were snatched by covert CIA or FBI teams and brought to
> the United States for trial or questioning. But CIA teams, working with
> foreign intelligence services, now capture suspected terrorists in one
> country and render them to another, often after U.S. interrogators have
> tried to gain information from them.
>
> Renditions are considered a covert action. Congress, which oversees the
CIA,
> knows of only the broad authority to carry out renditions but is not
> informed about individual cases, according to intelligence officials.
>
>
> Priest reported from Washington. Staff writers John Mintz and Glenn
Kessler
> in Washington contributed to this report.
>
>
>
>
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