Maher Arar

[Oscar]

Lawmakers Debate Establishing “Truth Commission” on Bush Admin Torture, Rendition and Domestic Spying

[ http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/5/la ... commission ]

March 5, 2009

On Capitol Hill, debate has begun over forming a truth commission to shed light on the Bush administration’s secret policies on detention, interrogation and domestic spying. A hearing on the issue was held Wednesday, two days after the Obama administration released a series of once-secret Bush administration Justice Department memos that authorized President Bush to deploy the military to carry out raids inside the United States. We speak to human rights attorney Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. [includes rush transcript]

EXCERPT:

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Maher Arar. The Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, has represented this Canadian citizen, who was sent by the United States, when he was transiting through JFK Airport, took him, held him in detention, then sent him to Syria, where he was tortured, eventually got back to Canada. Tell us what is happening. This is a new administration, the Obama administration. What’s happened with this case? He was awarded $10 million by the Canadian government?

MICHAEL RATNER: He was awarded $10 million, completely cleared. As of the end of the Bush administration, he was still on the terrorist list, prohibiting him getting into this country. And there’s a major lawsuit that the Center has pending. We’re awaiting word from that from the Second Circuit here in New York. It was argued before the full set of judges on whether or not he could sue his torturers or really sue the people who sent him to torture—the FBI agents, Ashcroft and others—and whether that’s a constitutional violation. So that’s what we’re waiting on.

We haven’t heard anything about whether the Obama administration is going to say, “Yes, we can do that.” And, you know, this has been a fairly strong negative of the Obama administration. I know you’ve covered it here, their position on state secrecy in the ACLU case on renditions, where they stood up in court and said, “We are insisting on state secrets. We vetted this with the Obama administration, and we’re insisting on it.” Hopefully that will not happen in the Arar case. But there has not yet been the push against this administration, this current one, to say, really, “Open this up, stop the state secrets stuff, and go for real accountability.”

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. We’re going to break, and we’d like to ask you, Michael, to stay with us, as we go to the segment on Cuba coming up, the more than a thousand artists, musicians, calling for Cuban musicians being able to come into the United States, challenging the blockade. We’ll also be joined by Vicki Huddleston. She was the equivalent of the US ambassador to Cuba, if there was one, the [US Interests Section in Cuba] under George W. Bush, and has taken an interesting stance on this. And we’ll be joined by a Grammy Award-winning musician, Arturo O’Farrill.

Related Links
Senator Patrick Leahy's statement on "Truth Commission"
(LINK no longer active)

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/pol ... ssion.html

[Oscar]

‘This is the wrong guy’: Former spy reveals CIA debate over arrest, torture of Maher Arar

[ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... e23799416/ ]

April 5, 2015

A former spy has described the debate within the CIA over the arrest, rendition and torture of Canadian Maher Arar, saying multiple colleagues warned against it because they were convinced they were punishing an innocent man.

The account from former CIA officer John Kiriakou sheds new light on decade-old events that caused a public inquiry in Canada, a $10-million payout from the federal government, and unsuccessful lawsuits in the U.S.

It’s a rare peek into discussions within the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency – whose role in the 2002-03 events has never been publicly examined, having remained off-limits in Canada’s inquiry.

It came during an interview at the ex-spy’s Virginia home, where he described how he went from being the head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9-11, to becoming the first CIA employee to publicly question the use of torture, to eventually spending two years in jail for leaking agency secrets.

During that interview, Kiriakou declined to discuss whether he’d interacted with Canada’s spy services – because, he said, revealing details about a foreign partner remains a cardinal sin in the world of espionage.

But he added: “We can talk about Maher Arar.”

Kiriakou expressed disgust with his country’s role in sending the engineer to be tortured in his native Syria, and with its continuing failure to issue an apology like Canada has.

He described a dynamic within the agency in which one mid-to-high-level officer ignored repeated objections from her subordinates, and insisted on pushing ahead.

“I can tell you that a lot of people inside the CIA objected to this,” Kiriakou said.

“(They said), ‘This is the wrong guy. He hasn’t done anything.“’ Arar was grabbed during a New York airport layover and flown to a notorious Syrian prison. He has described a year-long ordeal that included being beaten and stuffed into a body-sized slot in a windowless dungeon. Arar likened it to being buried alive.

At the time, Kiriakou was a branch chief within the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

While he won’t discuss the branch name, he says it fell under the broader Osama bin Laden unit and the Arar file was being handled by another branch within the center.

He says an officer, one level above branch chief, was determined to make the arrest.

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“It’s not too late for accountability here. It would be nice, at least, to do some naming and shaming... It doesn’t provide redress but at least it puts a light on what happened, and why it happened, and how it happened, to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

Another advocate for Arar said the same is true for Canada. Canadians who passed on information to the CIA continued law-enforcement careers and got promotions, said Kerry Pither, who wrote a book about the rendition of Arar and three other Canadians.

“We as Canadians need to know: who was it? Who was convincing, who was pressing this (CIA) agent?” Pither said.

The federal inquiry concluded it was likely that U.S. authorities relied on information from the RCMP – although it never had access to U.S. intelligence.